The Beginning Before the Beginning
by Dominaet
Summary: A tale of bravery and boredom, love and the lack thereof, and a girl named Mary, with a spoonful of sugar thrown in to help it all go down - aka Mary Poppins pre-movie
1. Chapter 1: The Poppinses

Mary was bored. Bored with her mother's airs and graces; bored with her over-coddled, sheltered life; and especially bored with the rose in the border of her handkerchief that she could never seem to get quite right. Beautiful embroidery was an essential skill for a true lady, or so Ms. Delayney, the governess, told her; but even so, Mary couldn't seem to muster a solid interest in the art. Oh, she did well enough at it – in fact, Ms. Delayney seemed to think she was something of a prodigy – but over the last few months Mary's pleasure with being praised had lost its keenness. For some reason the knowledge that she was making her mother happy was no longer quite enough of a reason for Mary to do things that she didn't want to do. Ms. Delayney was excessively fond of the word "phase", and used it liberally whenever Mrs. Poppins worried about her daughter's education, so liberally that Mary herself had almost come to believe that one day she would wake up and suddenly be filled once again with the desire to make her parents proud; but five months had passed without change, and Mary was beginning to realize that she didn't want to change back to her old ways. As a young lady of 11 years old, Mary was becoming aware of the world around her and her place in it, and didn't like what she saw.

The Poppins were extremely wealthy. Now, wealth in and of itself isn't inherently bad; it's what the wealthy do with it that matters. Henry Poppins, not having a very original mind, did nothing with his wealth but hoard it and save it and use it to make more money – and as a result was a rather miserable man, though he didn't know it. His wife, Agatha, was from a family of wealthy hoarders and savers, and, not possessing an enquiring mind like that of her daughter, consequently assumed that hoarding and saving was the only way to go about the business of being wealthy. Of course, had Mrs. Poppins objected to her husband's handling of the family fortune, it wouldn't have made much of a difference – she was, after all, only a woman, and as all good late-19th-century-citizens know, women's brains are not suited to business. Their value lies in their ability to bear children, preferably boys; and for the most part Mrs. Poppins did that with admirable vigor. Her first baby was an obstinate, willful slip of a thing with clear blue eyes and a charming shock of almost-black hair. Mrs. Poppins, not feeling a particular kinship with the little creature, as it was indeed not a boy, named it Mary after a vaguely disliked sister. Mary was the eldest of four children, the role model for two brothers and a sister, and as such was always expected by her parents to act the part of a perfectly behaved child. To their relief, Mary's unpleasant nature had faded significantly by her 3rd birthday, and by age five she was as prim and proper as a five-year-old girl can be expected to be. She emulated her mother almost to a fault, sometimes saying things like "and have you heard about Mrs. Raddle? _Such_ a scandal!" to visitors such the Methodist minister; but, after being admonished, she could always elicit forgiveness by smiling her sweet, prim, pious smile and ducking her glossy black head in apology. Her parents were excessively proud of her, and it must be acknowledged that little Mary was not averse to being the reason for excessive pride.

However, nearly every existence is called into question at least once, and for practically perfect Mary, this first jolt of the real world took place two months after her 9th birthday. She was at the park with Ms. Delayney and her brothers (the afore-mentioned little sister was still too young for outings in the park) when she was approached by a grime-encrusted little boy, not much older than herself, wearing a rag of a shirt and a pair of too-big pants held up with belt of rope. Ms. Delayney was off attending to the boys, who, at ages 5 and 7, needed a good deal of supervision, so Mary was left with nothing but her own wits to help her decide how to handle the situation. She of course knew about poor people – she had seen them from a distance often enough and had been warned about them dozens of times – but she had never actually interacted with one, and consequently was rather unsure of what to expect. Would the boy know how to speak? Would Mary have to resort to gesturing and grunting to be understood? Oh, how vulgar – she wouldn't stoop to it. She was about to turn and run (or rather, walk at a fast but dignified pace) to Ms. Delayney when the boy spoke.

"If you please, Miss – care to see a bit o' magic?"

He had the most curious way of speaking, dropping whole letters off the ends of some of his words and changing others into completely different letters than they had any relation to. Nonetheless, Mary was intrigued. There was a glint of intelligence in the boy's eyes that made her turn reluctantly to face him.

"There's no such thing as magic," Mary answered loftily. "Only illusions or sometimes miracles from the Lord, if you're lucky. Minister Davis told me so."

"Did he? Well, he wouldn't know about my kind of magic – it's special, see."

Mary, being an obedient believer in the importance of loyalty to one's elders, sniffed disdainfully. "Minister Davis knows all about it. He told me about people like you. He says you're only after my easily-influenced mind and my pocket money."

The boy grinned. "No charge, Miss." He was amused by this proper little girl, with her spotless pink muslin and shiny dark curls. As a ten-year-old street rat he was rather more aware of the world than Mary was, and had the experience to find her tidy, buttoned-up appearance more amusing than enviable. He had spent enough hours sitting on the steps of St. Paul's watching people go by to know that the happiest were rarely those with the fanciest shawls.

Mary, on her part, couldn't deny a certain curiosity in the boy standing before her. It had never really occurred to her that she could have been born as anyone but herself; but as she stared at the scrawny, srappy boy in front of her she realized with something of a start that she could easily have been born into the same poverty as he was. In fact, for such a well-to-do child of only nine years she saw this surprising clearly. Mary wasn't ignorant by nature or any design of her own. She looked down on the poor not because she thought they were worthy of disdain, but because she was told to look down on them and had no reason to doubt those who told this to her. By nature she was not the type of child to take all information without question, but her natural inquisitiveness had been disciplined out of her when she was too young to know any better. However, everyone grows up eventually, and it is probably safe to say that everyone has to learn to think for his- or her-self at one time or another. In Mary's case this was an excessively good thing, because it meant that one day she was bound to realize that the opinions and values that had been force-fed to her as child weren't based on fact, but rather on a pre-concieved notion of what fact ought to be. Sooner or later she was bound to become once again the intelligent, independent child of her youth.

It was only a matter of time.


	2. Chapter 2: Bert

"Mary, that rose is positively shocking! Tell me, my dear, have you ever seen an _orange _rose before?"

Mary scowled. She never used to scowl. It felt deliciously naughty.

"Mary!" There was a warning in Ms. Delayney's voice. She was a decent woman, probably in her early thirties but always appearing several years older than she actually was, with a commanding chin and an affectedly expressive demeanor. She was terrifyingly good at sounding dangerous while maintaining a ladylike curve of a smile on her lips. Despite Mary's recent change in attitude, she couldn't quite bring herself to ignore that particular tone of voice.

"No, Ms. Delayney."

"Well, for goodness' sake, child, pick it out and do it again, in a pleasant color this time. A nice pale pink, perhaps. Think how nicely that will go with your new dress!"

It was absolutely shameless, Mary thought, the underhanded way in which Ms. Delayney tried to make her interested in the most mundane things like new dresses. It was a mystery to her, how she could once have thought so much of them. What was another dress, anyway? She had plenty of them. She would gladly give up all her fancy dresses and shawls for the freedom that a life on the streets could provide. Oh, how bored she was…!

"Mary? Go on, then, pick it out. Don't sit there lounging in that unladylike manner."

Mary ignored her for a full three seconds, just to prove that she could, before picking up the embroidery and using her needle to pry the firey-orange thread out of the white muslin, using more force than she probably needed to. Why did she even have that color of thread in her sewing basket if she wasn't allowed to use it?

The bell tinkled downstairs, calling Ms. Delayney to help with some duty regarding the youngest Poppins, a gap-toothed five-year-old named Christine. Ms. Delayney stood with stately haste, obviously rather glad for the possibility of a change of scene. Mary's sewing lesson had been going on for at least two hours, during which Ms. Delayney did nothing but read silently from her book of Keats and cough gently every so often.

As soon as Ms. Delayney was out of sight, Mary dropped her hands and her embroidery into her lap and slouched down again with a gusty sigh. It really was intolerable. Ever since that day in the park two years ago she had had a profound sense that something about her life wasn't quite right. The feeling had grown throughout her ninth and tenth years and the beginning of her eleventh, until finally something unknown in her snapped. Suddenly her mother's smile didn't seem quite so sincere; her father was not quite so much of a hero; her house was not quite home. And ever since that something inside her broke, she had been trying unsuccessfully to put her finger on what exactly it was that had caused her contented existence to come undone.

Mary sighed again and propped her elbow on the armrest of her chair, resting her face in the palm of her hand. She was sure Ms. Delayney would have a dignified fit if she saw the unbecoming way in which Mary's hand pushed her cheek up and stretched her mouth into an unpleasant grimace, but Mary didn't care. It felt glorious to stretch her face out after all the serene smiling and nodding that she found herself doing, morning, noon and night, more out of habit than anything else.

A bird chirped outside. Mary's eyes fell on the window and lingered. She had always loved birds. She felt a certain kinship with them and liked nothing better than to sing along with their whistled songs. Oh, how she envied their freedom! How wonderful it would be to be free, just for a little while; free to lounge about as much as she pleased without needing to worry about Ms. Delayney seeing and scolding her, free to run and skip, free to frown and free talk back as much as she liked and free to make her own choices. If only she had somewhere to go that no one else knew about, where no one could find her…

At that moment, a slightly ridiculous idea fell into Mary's head. She pondered it, shooed it away, beckoned it back, and pondered it some more. After all, why not? The window opened right onto the roof. It wasn't so very high up – only two and a half floors – and if there was no easy way down she could caper about up on the roof for as long as she wanted without Ms. Delayney being any the wiser. Did she dare? Yes – she had made up her mind. She stood and strode over to the window before she could second-guess herself. It was an easy matter to pull her old dollhouse under the sill and climb up atop it, and from there the roof and freedom were only a dainty step away. Mary breathed deeply and took it in one purposeful stride, holding onto either side of the window frame as she did so to keep her balance.

Once Mary was actually out the window, however, and no longer separated from that two-and-a-half floor drop by a solid foot of wall, she found that her courage deserted her as quickly and feebly as she could gasp. She was about to try to turn around, a prospect that didn't seem particularly attractive to her, and go back inside, when she was nearly startled from her perch by a voice.

"Coo!" it said. "What's this?"

Mary looked around so quickly that she had to snatch gropingly at the window frame once again to keep from sliding down the shingles to the street below. The speaker was a boy of about thirteen, sitting on the edge of a chimney pot with a large black chimney brush in his hand and soot covering every inch of him. Mary did her best to draw herself up indignantly at being addressed thus by such a person, which was not easy in her position and ultimately only resulted in her wavering and clinging even more tightly to the ledge behind her. Feeling rather foolish, and consequently all the more indignant, she lifted her chin and adopted her best imitation of her mother.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well," the boy said, somewhat apologetically, but with an undeniable glint of humor in his eye, "it's just a bit odd, that's all… fine ladies such as yourself don't regularly go about on the roofs, at least so far's I know."

"Well, can't I? It's my roof!"

"Sure you can, I don't mean to say that there's anything _wrong _with it. I only mean, young ladies of your obvious class don't often choose to do so."

Mary sensed, quite accurately, that she was being mocked. She sniffed disdainfully and looked away, pretending to be interested in watching a pigeon hop along the ridge of the roof next door. The boy grinned, letting the silence stretch and wondering what the girl would do if he simply refused to be out-classed into submission. Finally he stood and slid down the tiles to stand beside her, pulling off his hat with a cheeky expression of apology.

"I'm sorry, how abominably rude of me. We haven't even been introduced. How d'you do, miss? Name's Bert." He stuck out a grimy hand.

Mary eyed his hand with disdain. "Mary," she replied primly, more out of manners than because she felt that he deserved an answer. "Mary Poppins."

"Mary Poppins," he said slowly, as if to get a taste of the name. "Well, I'm right pleased to meetcha, Miss Poppins! First time up among the chimney pots?"

Mary regarded him sourly down her nose. "Whatever makes you say that?"

"You looked a little uncomfortable, that's all. Not quite at your ease, like."

"I was – I am – perfectly all right, thank you," She answered briskly.

Bert nodded soberly. "I don't doubt it. But be that as it may, how'd you like a tour? It's frightful nice up further. You can see for miles."

"That would be entirely improper," Mary said, but despite her cold tone there was a gleam of interest in her eye.

"Not in the least!" Bert exclaimed. "Me mates are up here as well, someplace. We'll be perfectly chaperoned."

"But – Ms. Delayney – "

"This Ms. Delayney of yours has never been up on a roof in her life, I'd wager. She couldn't possibly understand, could she?"

Mary recalled the way Ms. Delayney had scoffed at her whimsical rose just ten minutes ago. Bert was right – Ms. Delayney didn't understand anything about anything besides place settings and making tiny stitches. Mary lifted her chin defiantly.

"You're right. I'm positively certain she hasn't." She stood up straight, then wavered, remembering all too suddenly that she was, indeed, standing only several feet from a two-and-a-half story fall to the pavement. Bert grabbed her elbow with one sooty hand.

"Steady on! It's perfectly safe once you're used to it, but you've got to be confident, otherwise you'll never get far. Also, lose the shoes – they'll make it twenty times harder to get a good grip with your toes."

Mary, feeling certain that she ought to be shocked by such an idea, stared at him, wide eyed. Bert raised his eyebrows, waiting. A long silence ensued. Finally Bert sighed pointedly.

"Well, if you're too _scared_then I guess there's nothing I can do about it." He turned as if to go, reaching up to tip his hat. "Good day, Miss Poppins."

"Oh, very well, then, there's no need to be that way about it!" Mary snapped. She eased herself down into a sitting position and untied her slippers.

She had to admit, once she had gotten them off and struggled into a standing position once again, that there was something rather blissful about the feel of her bare feet on the warm shingles. She felt a silly thrill. Fancy her, Mary Poppins, sweet, proper little Mary Poppins, standing barefoot on her roof! She almost smiled at the thought – but it wouldn't do to let that sooty, impolite boy Bert know that she was pleased. She lifted her chin and looked at the boy with lofty impatience.

"Well? Are we going or aren't we?"


	3. Chapter 3: On the Rooftops of London

**HI- thanks for reading! I love constructive criticism! :) I'm glad that at least some people are enjoying this - it's one of those stories that I've kind of had in my head for a while and am finally putting into words. In this chapter I'm basing the "****rooftops of London" on those in the movie (except in the case of Mary's window, which I think is kind of an exception - I imagine it opening onto a slanted part of the roof that slopes up to meet the flat concrete top part of the roof. Dunno if those actually existed back then but... whatever, imagination is a wonderful thing! :D). I didn't spend a lot of time editing this chapter so I hope it's ok. As I said... I love constructive criticism so feel free to tell me your opinions! Like how do you feel about my portrayals of Mary and Bert? Do they seem true to character (obviously they're different because they're children... but you know what I mean)? It's hard to get them right... I'd love some feedback. **

**Side note: is "uncallused" not a word? My spellcheck tells me it's not. But my thoughts are, if it's not, what do you say when you want to describe something that doesn't have a callus on it? I'm a bit flustered about the whole thing.**

**In any case... here's chapter 3!**

The climb up the side of the roof was not a pleasant one. Mary, despite her attempts to keep her composure, found it slipping time and time again as her soft, uncallused toes lost their grip on the smooth tiles. More than once she forgot to breathe – her insides seemed to jump up and cram themselves into her throat every time her feet slid on the shingles. However, once Bert had gained the top and pulled her bodily up the rest of the way, Mary stood and, gazing out over the medley of roofs that made up the rest of Copperfield Lane, had to admit (to herself, in a very small, noncommittal kind of way) that Bert had not exaggerated. It was indeed "frightful nice", and then some.

"Come on," Bert said, before she had time to fully process the sight before her. He tugged her towards the side of the roof that almost met the Burnses' roof next door. Mary felt her stomach give an uncomfortable jolt as they neared the edge. The Burnses' roof, which from the ground looked like it almost touched the Poppinses', was actually quite a substantial distance away. At that particular moment, Mary might have ventured a guess of at least a kilometer.

"How –" she started to ask, but before she could complete the question, Bert had leapt easily onto the angled tiles of the side of the Burnses roof (which was higher than the Poppinses, being on the uphill side of their house) and crouched, hanging onto the edge of the tiles where they became smooth, flat concrete with one hand and reaching down to Mary with the other. Mary instinctively wanted to shrink away, and she almost considered turning and slipping and sliding her way back down the tiles to her familiar, safe nursery. But that would never do – for one thing, she hated that nursery. It was so babyish, all done up in pastels and lace, with a frilly pink crib for Christine. Mary couldn't count how many times she had sat with her embroidery abandoned in her lap, staring sourly at the nondescript animals that speckled the wallpaper border circling the room. No, she couldn't go back to the nursery, for that reason; but more importantly, she couldn't go back because if she did would look like the sheltered, childish little girl that she had been brought up to be; and at that moment the idea of being That Girl (for that was how Mary thought about that part of her – capitalized and vaguely distasteful) was even worse to Mary than the idea of potentially falling to her death in the garden below.

All of this passed so quickly in Mary's head that Bert, on his part, saw only a slight paling and a brief hesitation; then Mary drew her shoulders back and stepped purposefully up onto the ledge, and with one graceful leap she landed on the roof beside him, gripping his hand and looking a bit green, but otherwise composed. Bert stared.

"Well, well well!" He said, obviously impressed, and then seemed to be at a loss as to what to say next. Mary tried vainly not to blush. Truth be told she was not entirely certain how it had happened. Somehow the roof had risen to meet her foot, in a way – the ridge behind her had given a gentle nudge, maybe – she didn't know, couldn't put it into words in her mind. All she knew was that she was not smashed amongst the roses below her, and she was thoroughly glad of it.

"Huh," Bert grunted. Then he shrugged to himself edged around, pulling Mary with him as he yanked himself up onto the flat part of the roof. Three boys lounged amongst the chimney pots in the middle of the roof, each looking grimier and sootier than the one before. Mary stood and smoothed her skirt with clammy hands, trying to recover her poise.

"These are me mates – Jem, Davey and Michael," Bert said, gesturing to each in turn as he said their name. They nodded casually in greeting. "Gents, this here is Mary Poppins."

Mary nodded back with a hint of her usual prim and lofty manner, and said, somewhat shakily, "how do you do?"

"Look here, where'd you pick this one up?" One of the boys – Davey, was it? – asked.

Mary drew herself up and was about to express the somewhat feeble outrage that she thought she ought to feel at being addressed as "that one" when Bert cut her off.

"Found her down on the roof there – climbed out of her window," he said. "I'm showing her the sights, that's all."

The other boys looked dubious but didn't argue.

"Alright then," one of the boys said, in a tone of voice that matched his expression. "But don't count me in – I just got done cleaning the Easton's chimney and I almost fell clear down it at the end, I was so tired."

The other two chimed in with similar complaints. Bert shrugged good naturedly and began pulling Mary towards the other side of the roof before she had time to protest. "All right then, suit yourselves. I guess it's just you and me then, Poppins!"

The next ten minutes passed in a dizzying whirl of jumping and hopping and wobbling along roof ridges. Mary, although she was sufficiently terrified, found to her surprise that the experience was strangely exhilarating. There was something gloriously ridiculous about the whole thing – she, Mary Poppins, clambering across the roofs of London! She had never been further than the front gate without Miss Delayney close behind, and now here she was, almost to the Thames where it flowed past the great clock tower.

Of course, she kept her delight well hidden – it wouldn't do for Bert to get too satisfied with himself. Besides, she hated acknowledging that there were things that she didn't know and experiences that she had never had. She was supposed to be privileged, after all; and despite her recent awakening as to the ludicrousness of her family's general position, there were some quirks and traits that had been so relentlessly pounded into her young mind that they hadn't been, and probably never would be, completely eradicated. In fact, some of these traits – like her pride – had even been enforced by her epiphany. She rather felt that, since she had the presence of mind to see the ridiculousness of her family's situation while her parents continued to plod along blandly in their meaningless lives, she must be smarter, or at least more clear sighted, than they; and as any parent can tell you, there is nothing more irresistible or worse for a little girl's ego than believing that her parents are not as smart as she is. Mary, although she was indeed remarkably smart for an 11-year-old girl, was not quite smart enough to avoid this particular pitfall.

Yes, part of Mary's lofty behavior was personality, but a large part of it was also habit: Mary was simply so used to disdaining those of lower classes than she that she did it without thinking. Which brings us back to Mary being loftily disconnected on the rooftops – it came so naturally that she hardly questioned its "rightness". Bert, to his credit, was not unduly upset by Mary's seeming lack of excitement. He had an admirably keen mind, and consequently wasn't fooled by Mary's airs – not completely, anyway. Still, it would have been nice to see her crack a smile. He thought she probably had a nice one, and being a young man in early adolescence he was not immune to the charms of a nice smile.

Just when Mary thought she was going to disgrace herself and faint clear off the roof from a mixture of sheer exhaustion (she was not, after all, accustomed to this kind of physical activity) and giddiness at the height, Bert was saying "almost there – " and pulling her up onto the roof of one last building, this one at least a half dozen stories high. Mary stood, and looked, and suddenly she didn't care a bit about being lofty and respectable and she opened her mouth and sighed, "ohhh…!"

Bert grinned at her sideways.

"Like what you see, then?"

Mary turned to him, her pretty eyes made beautiful with delight, beaming in a way she hadn't in months – or maybe even in her life. "Oh, it's lovely!"

It was more than lovely – it was wonderful, magnificent – she had never seen anything like it, and couldn't even begin find the words to describe it. The whole city seemed to be at her feet. The sun, which had begun to sink towards the horizon, cast a pale yellow glow over the streets. Its light blended with the smoke in the air, forming a dreamy haze and softening the hard lines of the buildings. The water of the Thames, which Mary had thought could only look murky and rotten, glittered like a jewel as it wound its way into the distance. To their right the clock tower loomed, casting its shadow in a great, dark pool on the buildings surrounding it and on the tiny people and carts in the street below.

Bert's grin widened. "Thought you'd like it. I do, anyways. It's like another world up here. A man can be what he likes, with no one to tell him what he can and can't do."

Mary, although privately reflecting that this boy beside her could hardly be called a man, kept her thoughts to herself. After all, he had brought her here, and he was admittedly rather nice – for such a filthy, uncouth kind of person, in any case.


	4. Chapter 4: Possibilities & Consequences

**I hope this chapter isn't too tedious - more Bert/Mary interactions and adventures forthcoming. :)**

After being safely escorted back to her room that evening, and silently bearing Miss Delaney's scolding and demands as to where she had been for the past two hours, Mary lay in bed and pondered her day. Suddenly the prospect of her life was not so dull, not an unbending, carefully maintained path that stretched endlessly into the distance. Or rather, the path was still there, but now there were little, barely-visible footpaths that branched off at intervals and twisted away alluringly into the veiled landscape on either side. Mary felt, quite definitively, that she could take one of those footpaths any time she wanted, and it would not lead her astray.

Bert had shown her the possibilities. They had sat on that roof at the top of the world (for that was how Mary regarded it) for at least an hour while he told her about all the people he had met and seen in his day-to-day life. He described the people who came through the park where he sold roasted chestnuts in winter and drew chalk drawings in summer, all the different classes and types and professions. There were bankers and peddlers and teachers and society women and governesses calling frantically after scattered children. Mary wondered idly to herself if Bert had ever seen _her_ at that park, and if so, what he had thought of her. And suddenly her mind made a connection, and she looked over at him quickly. He was gazing out over the city, grinning slightly as he described a woman he had once seen who had a man walking a few paces ahead of her, struggling with her three unruly poodles. He didn't see Mary's furtive, self-conscious glance, or her blush and quickly averted gaze as her suspicions were confirmed. She hoped intensely that he didn't remember that day – her, with her silly pink dress that she was so proud of at the time, and her self absorbed manner, and her "Minister Davis". She blushed even more violently when she remembered all the foppery she had spouted. What a silly fool she had been.

Lying in bed, Mary resolved never to be made a fool of again by the people who raised her – or by anyone, for that matter. She would never be dictated to. On the contrary, she would use her parents' methods against them. She would never do anything that she didn't want to, and she would make the world accept it.

Mary proved to be remarkably adept at getting people to do what she wanted while making them think that it was their idea all along. In the months and years that followed her talent grew, and by her 14th birthday she was a master of the art. She had become twice as obstinate and three times as pretty as she had been as an 11-year-old, which necessarily resulted in a good deal of vanity and a fair amount more pride. Her parents had despaired of ever recovering the docile, easily influenced child that she had once been, and had set their sights on eventually marrying her off quickly to an eligible young man before she completely disgraced herself and her family in society. However it would be at least a year or two before they could reasonably introduce her into society, and for this reason they resolved that some action had to be taken: Mary was to be sent to finishing school. It was certainly not an ideal step to take – finishing school was for those who couldn't afford a governess – but desperate times called for desperate measures. Mary simply couldn't be controlled. She had taken to disappearing for hours at a time, and no one knew where. At first Mrs. Poppins suspected the truth – that Mary was wandering around the streets of London with some "unsavory types" – and demanded that the door and all downstairs windows be locked and watched carefully at all hours; but when the disappearances continued, Mrs. Poppins, not even considering that her daughter might be escaping onto the roof, concluded that Mary must be hiding somewhere in the house to slake her newly-aquired taste for adventure novels or to write in her journal, and uneasily let the matter be.

If this was the only disquieting habit that Mary developed, it could be covered up and overlooked; but Mary's whole demeanor had changed. She was lofty and distant, and she avoided polite society at all costs, unless she felt like making a spectacle of herself (as Mrs. Poppins saw it). When she did interact with other people she said and did everything with the graces of her upbringing, but her perfect manners only thinly veiled the brisk, dangerously independent demeanor underneath. Mary refused to engage in small talk, and seemed to delight in bringing up shocking topics of conversation just to see the women around her fidget. She always had the last word, and never continued a conversation longer than she wanted to. Further, she seemed to have no interest whatever in catching the attention of anyone of the opposite sex. In Mrs. Poppins's eyes Mary was much too self-sufficient and intimidating to inspire any hope of a speedy match. Why, just last week she had picked up a spider, in her hand, right in front of Mrs. Turngate and her eligible young son Henry, and carried it across the parlor and out of the house to release it in the bushes outside. Mrs. Poppins felt that control was quickly being lost – if it had not been lost already – and the only way to regain it was to send Mary somewhere, away from the prying eyes of society, to come out of this alarming phase and re-adopt her status as a true lady. And so, a week after she turned 14, Mary Poppins found herself sitting on her bed in her nightclothes, staring at the two big trunks that contained all her "necessary" possessions (so called by Miss Delayney), and wondering what this dreary new future might hold.


	5. Chapter 5: An Unsatisfactory Goodbye

**5**

"He's not here."

A sick, helpless feeling swooped unpleasantly into the pit of Mary's stomach. "Not here? Well, where is he then?"

The small, filthy boy at the door of the room where Bert and a host of other street children stayed shrugged, chewing at a hangnail. "Jem and him left hours ago. 'Dunno where they was goin'. They ain't been back since."

Mary stood for a moment, feeling completely and pathetically lost. She couldn't possibly go looking for Bert – she was taking enough of a risk being out of bed at all, let alone out of her room, let alone out of her house, let alone at the door of one of the shabbiest apartments in one of the worst neighborhoods in London at eleven at night. But leaving without seeing him was out of the question. He didn't even know she was leaving – how could he, she'd only just found out herself that morning (oh, she really despised those parents of hers – but it wouldn't do any good to dwell on that now). What would Bert think if she simply didn't show up at the park the next day? It was a Tuesday – he tried to take a little extra time off on Tuesdays. Would he come looking for her? Oh, no – he wouldn't actually come to her door, would he? Mary bit back a slightly hysterical giggle at the thought of the maid, Clara, opening the door to find Bert, sooty, ragged and unapologetic, on the doorstep, and then dug her teeth into her lip as the feeling of hysteria changed abruptly to a intense urge to cry. He wouldn't get any answers – her mother would never see him – he wouldn't even know that Mary had been bodily carted away against her will. He might even think – no, he wouldn't – but what if he did? She couldn't bear it if he thought that she was relieved to get away from him. It might look that way, with her not saying goodbye. Oh, why couldn't he just be where she wanted him to be? He was always popping up when she least expected it, but now that she actually needed to see him he had to go off galavanting about who knew where. She hated how pitifully, helplessly distressed she felt at not having him at her beck and call. Damn that Bert! Yes, she'd think it if she wanted to – damn him, damn, damn, _damn!_

Mary turned her back on the little boy at the door (was it Michael's little brother? She couldn't recall just at that moment) and shivered violently, half with emotion, half with the cold. The days and nights were just beginning to get colder – it was the perfect time of year to be in the profession of a chimney sweep. The people in the big, five-chimneyed houses like Mary's were being reminded that they had fireplaces, and excessive amounts of money lying around waiting to be spent on looking respectable; and just enough time had gone by since the year before that they couldn't quite remember just when they last had their chimneys cleaned, and so, lest they be deemed the owners of bohemian flues, they began calling in the sweeps. Mary found it odd to think that at about this time of season, three years before, she had met Bert for the first time. Of course, that wasn't counting their encounter in the park two years prior to that – and Mary didn't. She had almost completely convinced herself that Bert had no idea that the frilly, proper little girl to whom he had tried to show a magic trick that morning in the park was the same girl that he now traipsed around London with, and had resolved to block the entire incident from her mind with the somewhat flawed rationale that if no one remembered it, it hadn't happened.

"Mary?"

No – quell the surge of giddy relief – it was only Michael. He emerged from the dark street, wiping his blackened face with an equally blackened handkerchief. Mary cursed her wildly galloping heart. Why on earth had she gotten so emotional about seeing Bert? She could just tell Michael that she had to go away, and that she had come to say goodbye, and he would pass the message on to Bert. It was not ideal, but it would be good enough given the circumstances. _So stop behaving like such a flimsy-willed fool of a girl!_

"Michael – I wanted to tell Bert – " she paused to gather her poise. "I have a message for Bert. I have to go away, never mind where. Please let him know that I came to say goodbye."

"Sure thing, Mary," Michael said, looking at her with an expression of mingled curiosity and concern.

"And Michael –" her poise began to slip again. "- Please – make sure he knows – I didn't want to go. And – "

She stopped herself, closing her lips firmly. No need to show any more emotion than she already had. Not in front of Michael, in any case. Of Bert's friends he was probably the most gentlemanly, but he was also the most infuriatingly sensitive when presented with emotional women. He took great pride in his manly composure, and Mary had often come to see Bert and found Michael sitting in the tiny apartment being sensitively strong in a nobly self-satisfied kind of way while a girl sobbed uncontrollably on his shoulder. No, Mary would not give him the pleasure of being that girl. She had a sneaking suspicion that he had been waiting and hoping for years that she would break down in tears in his presence, just so he could be manly and sensitive and noble to her, the only girl he knew whom he had never seen shed so much as a tear. Mary drew herself up.

"No, that's all. Just tell him I came to say goodbye. And that I hope to have the pleasure of calling upon him again someday."

"Yes, of course. Are you sure –"

"Yes, Michael, thank you, I'm quite all right. Goodnight to you."

One formally gracious nod and she turned majestically away, wishing she had a skirt to sweep behind her. But openly flaunting her womanliness would not have been prudent in that particular part of town, at that particular time of night; and so Mary had to settle for lifting her chin and regally straightening the lapels of Bert's old jacket as she strode away down the street.

Oh, her stupid, foolish heart – if only it would stop aching in that singularly irritating way.


	6. Chapter 6: Dreaming

**6**

"Mary," Bert said thoughtfully, and then sat in silence for several seconds.

"Well?" Mary demanded impatiently. She was feeling particularly uptight and irritable that day, probably because Bert was being especially sweet and ridiculous and it was difficult for her to keep her poise. She always got irritable when she felt that her composure was in danger of failing her. Bert, fully aware of the reason for her priggishness, carefully hid a smile before he continued.

"Oh, just the trees – I ain't never seen such trees. One of them blossoms would look bee-yootiful in that hair of yours."

Mary blushed against her will and looked away with a roll of her eyes, not quite managing to smother the hint of a smile that crept across her lips. It was awfully tempting to give in and enjoy herself. She figured she probably would within the next few minutes, if Bert kept up his stream of unashamedly trite compliments and vacant small talk. The pathetic thing was, he sounded remarkably like that Henry Turngate who always stumbled in on the skirt of his mother when she came to pay her weekly visit. Mary detested the long, stuffy minutes that she was forced to sit, making dull conversation with the young man. He didn't even seem to understand her innuendos and he seemed to be impossible to scandalize –he responded to her sly allusions with several slow blinks before carrying on with the conversation as though there had been no interruption to the comfortable, mundane thread of small talk that he had prepared for the visit (no doubt with the help of his mother, Mary thought maliciously). That was why Mary treasured these late afternoons with Bert, sitting in the grass amongst an especially lovely clump of trees in the park, away from the prying eyes of society. It was unspeakably refreshing to be with someone who saw through the silly conventions and self-satisfied mindsets that Mary had grown up amongst.

It was Spring. The sun was mild and fell through the trees in gentle streams, painting the ground with lacy, dappled patterns. Our of sight but not quite out of earshot, children played, their laughter and screams unsilenced by their caretakers' admonishments. A brisk breeze blew, winter's last futile effort to stay. In the sky a few brave kites darted and wobbled like a scanty gaggle of unruly birds. Mary sighed, abandoning her poise with one gusty breath. Times like these she forgot why it had once seemed so important that she keep her bearing. She fell backwards on the grass, savoring the soft, clean, moist feel and scent of it as it cradling her head and shoulders. Bert grinned down at her, not bothering to conceal the triumphant glint in his eye. He always took it as a personal victory in those fleeting moments when she finally abandoned her airs. Mary pretended not to notice, gazing up at the pink blossoms above her. A pair of birds hopped from branch to branch, bringing bits of straw and paper to a little hollow in one of the trees for their nest. They paused every now and then to peer down at the humans below them, whistling cheery nothings.

"Bert," Mary said suddenly, "do you ever feel you can understand what birds are saying?"

Bert scratched his neck and shrugged.

"Can't say's I do."

"Like just now, for instance – I distinctly heard him complain to me that the jays across the lake were stealing their nesting materials."

Bert scratched his neck again, apparently unsure how to respond. He had heard only a few warbling whistles and a twitter. Mary looked at him.

"You don't believe me, do you."

"No – I mean yes – sure I do," Bert answered easily, feigning nonchalance. Mary sighed. He didn't, not really, but she supposed it was sweet of him to pretend. She looked back up through the branches. Her eyes began to wander as her mind drifted lazily through the events of the last few months. Her mother continued to vocally despair of her; her father continued to silently disapprove of her; Miss Delayney continued to scold her. Her brother James had seen her coming in the window one night and it took everything in Mary's power to keep him from tattling on her. He had tried more than once, but somehow something always happened to shift the focus away from him right at the crucial moment. Mary was beginning to suspect that someone or something was on her side, like a guardian angel, almost – but Mary was fairly certain that the guardian angels that she heard about in church wouldn't facilitate lying, deception and/or unchaperoned fraternization with chimney sweeps.

The lemony sun was slanting through the trees at a new angle, tinged with the golden hue of late afternoon when Bert stirred, nudging Mary from her reverie.

"I think I'd best be off," he said, getting to his feet.

"Oh," Mary said, rather helplessly. She almost added, "Must you?" but stopped herself. She refused to sound quite so needy and pathetic. Of course he must. It was clearly almost 4:00 – he had to go off wherever he went to gather flowers for selling to gentlemen on their way home from work that evening. The time had slipped by unusually quickly that afternoon, and Mary felt irrationally irritated with Bert for letting her drift off like that. She would much rather have been listening to Bert talk about his life on the streets. He had a way of making it seem like the most thrilling, adventurous life a person could want.

...

"Miss Poppins! I beg your pardon! Miss!"

Mary started and blinked, struggling to clear the sleep from her eyes. A light flared in the darkness and she turned her head away, annoyed. Her backside ached from the hard carriage seat beneath her and she winced, shifting her weight, as reality settled back into her gut in one fell swoop.

"Miss Poppins, we're here."


	7. Chapter 7: Young Ladies

**7**

It was dreadful.

Oh, the girls were all right. A decent amount of them were in situations similar to Mary's and had very little personal interest in being anywhere near the vicinity of Miss Harwick's Academy for Young Ladies, but unlike Mary, most of them were not clever or bold enough to assert their discontent. And though none of them would ever be able to get through Mary's hard veneer, they were nice enough to her. True, they tended to gossip about her. She knew they did. She had an unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on one's point of view) knack for making people feel uncomfortable, and as is well known to any person who has ever felt uncomfortable, uncomfortable people like to share uncomfortable stories in an attempt to gain a sense that their uncomfortableness isn't any more uncomfortable than anyone else's. It's human nature, as Mary was aware – her parents shared uncomfortable stories about her all the time when they thought she wasn't listening, and her mother's friends set in with their uncomfortable stories as soon as they clapped eyes on each other.

No, the other students weren't the problem. Neither were the teachers – they were decent human beings with a reasonable grasp of knowledge in their subject, nothing like the brutal, overbearing schoolmarms and schoolmasters that Mary read about in Mr. Dickens's novels.

The problem was the pure, dreary _safety _of the place. There was absolutely no room for adventure. Even the windows didn't open wide enough to allow out anything bigger than a hand. The girls were escorted outside once a day for art lessons, during which they were watched closely by the teacher and a last-year girl or two who strutted about peering at the pupils' compositions and somehow managing to communicate, without making a sound, their amused contempt for the amateurs' attempts at art. The students were never allowed out on their own, for any reason. Six months into Mary's sentence, she still couldn't have pointed in even the general direction of the nearest town. She had an unpleasant, lurking suspicion that sometime during the coach ride to the school, while she slept and hallucinated her dreamlike memories, the coach had passed through some secret portal into a different world in which the only suggestion of civilization was Miss Harwick and her unwilling Young Ladies.

Not that Mary took it all lying down – quite the contrary. She felt a certain sense of obligation to herself to keep up her barely-concealed rebellion. It was only a shade of rebellion, but rebellion nonetheless: her light was always the last off at night; she made up nonsense words and spent whole dinner periods convincing the girls around her that each word was real; while the other girls recited verb conjugations in French class, Mary murmured her best French swears, smiling demurely when the teacher's slightly alarmed and quizzical gaze passed over her. And Mary was slowly discovering a knack for making things seem like other than they should be. With just the right tweak of concentration she could make girls' dresses fly up around their knees and send teachers' papers scattering to the ground seemingly on their own, without any noticeable cause. It occurred to Mary upon pondering her newfound talent one evening that she really ought to find this aptitude at least a little troubling or unusual; but she could say in all honesty that, to her, it didn't seem unusual in the least. If asked to explain her reasoning she might say that it had come upon her so slowly that she hardly felt the change, or maybe that she had felt it in her all along and it was only just coming to the surface. Whatever the reason, this capability was a part of Mary, and she could feel it growing stronger every day.

Lying in bed at night, however, a feeling of suffocation and hollowness would overwhelm her, and her resistances would crumble, and she would finally admit that she was lost without the moonlit escapades on the rooftops, the hot Summer afternoons wading in the pond in the park while young mothers and governesses looked disapprovingly on, Bert's comfortable old shirt and breeches, the delicious breeze on her neck when she tucked her hair up under his cast-off cap, the knowingly amused glint in his eyes. Yes, very well, she'd admit it: she missed Bert. It wasn't until those cold, unfriendly nights that Mary truly began to see what Bert was to her: her only friend, her only semblance of family, and the closest thing she had to a confidante. She regretted, sometimes, the way she shut him out. Even those carefree moods that he sometimes managed to put her in felt guarded. She wondered, as the other girls slumbered peacefully around her and the hall monitor's creaking step shuffled past the door, what it would be like to let someone see that dark, unfamiliar void inside of her that she supposed was her true self. Mary suspected that of all people, she was the last one who would ever be able to shine a light in all the unknown crevices of her soul. She felt that there were so many conflicting passions and characteristics mixed up inside of her that none of them felt real. It was as though that pure essence of herself had been shut up when she was a little girl, built into layer after layer of hard, thick walls, and could do nothing but rattle around inside, only occasionally managing to shout an understandable word from within. Mary had locked herself up so tightly that she feared she would never find her way out.


	8. Chapter 8: A Persistent Itch

**This one gets a bit sentimental, but the adventure will resume next chapter...**

**8**

Mary awoke one morning and realized, somewhat belatedly, that it was spring again. She supposed it had probably been coming on slowly for a while, as it did every year; but for some reason she hadn't thought to remark it until this particular morning. She wasn't sure why, exactly, this fact had struck her so forcibly just at that moment; but strike her it had, along with an itch somewhere under the surface of her skin that pushed and pulled at her, urging her to do _something_… she couldn't quite put her finger on what.

It was early, earlier than she usually woke up, and the sun was just barely beginning to show its rays above the far horizon, shading the landscape in blue-gray and painting the sky faintly green. The window, locked tight every night by a well-meaning schoolmistress, had been opened in the night by a mischievous or possibly simply whimsical hand, and a cold, clean trail of night air snaked across Mary's face, filling her mind with half-formed images of new grass and freshly-aired sheets and rainy April evenings. She smiled dreamily, drinking in the damp air. For a moment she almost forgot that she wasn't lying on her hard, cold roof with Bert, watching the sunrise as they had done one morning in a time that seemed impossibly far away.

But then one of the girls who shared Mary's room coughed and stirred, and the spell was broken, and once more Mary was trapped and smothered and unhappy. The itch worsened.

The days that followed that half-snatched moment of happiness were unbearable. Flowers bloomed and birds chirped and gentle breezes caressed the faces of anyone lucky enough to happen into them, and Mary had a terrible sense of withering and dying while the world sprang into life around her. Her feet longed to clamber, her mind yearned to drift, and her soul clamored to be let loose to sweep away across the purple hills in the distance, to the craggy shores of France and the sun-baked deserts of Africa, to freedom. The days got longer, the sun grew hotter. The grasses in the fields lengthened, faded to yellow, and doubled over, heavy with grain. The sky deepened and then paled again as spring became summer, and summer lingered on the edge of autumn. While other girls went away, and came back, and received packages and presents and visitors, Mary had only a letter, brief and curt, that stated (in essence) that her mother had all but forgotten her eldest daughter and saw no reason to send for her or visit until her reformation was complete. And still Mary itched, and ached, and withered. She hated herself for not trying. She felt that it didn't matter what she tried, so long as she tried it. Even if the only thing she tried was for top marks in her classes or a position as head girl or something nauseating like that, at least she would be trying, instead of wasting away inside her own mind with only that persistent itch to keep her company. But some resolute, stubborn part of her refused to submit, taunting her with midnight dreams of a self-reliant, self-sufficient life and preventing her from giving up her frustrated hope. Mary hated that part of her, but even while she hated it she clung to it like an unwilling skeptic clings to the last feeble threads of faith. She had not forgotten the promise that she made to herself as a child, naïve and ignorant as it was but not the less earnest for all that. She could not be made a fool of; she would not.


	9. Chapter 9: Impracticalities

**9**

It was early September when a storm hit the school with such a force as made the windows rattle and the doors shudder like a castle under siege. No one expected it, and the entire school was thrown into uproar. All sense of hierarchy was lost – mistresses strained, shoulder-to-shoulder with their pupils, to close windows thrown open by the wind; servants scurried underfoot, calling on each other and anyone in the vicinity to lend assistance in stopping up chinks around the doors and windows. It was in the midst of this melee that Mary found herself seized by none other than the assistant headmistress herself, a tall, middle-aged, lean creature with a knack for debilitating stares.

"Miss Poppins!"

Mary turned, bewildered, from her sentry at a window where she knelt mopping up a lake of rainwater that had battled its way in before the pane could be forced shut. Why she should be wanted was beyond her; she had been relatively docile in the past few months, and hadn't even sent a pencil skittering across the floor since the last week of summer. And anyway, she could hardly imagine Miss Catermole thinking it practical to discipline her while such a storm raged outside.

"Miss Poppins," Miss Catermole gasped as she swept by in a flurry of impractical skirts and tumbling hair, "you are needed – and you, Miss Weston – girls, all of you, hurry! You are needed in the chapel!"

The chapel was a small, unassuming building about thirty yards away from the main school, accessed by a carefully maintained gravel path by all fifty-three of Miss Harwick's boarders and staff every Sunday for morning prayers. The dilemma that required all possible hands, as Mary and the gaggle of boarders and servants who answered the distress call were soon made to understand, was that the big double doors had flown open and the wind and rain were wreaking havoc on the bibles and the new hymnals, so laboriously saved and planned for over the past five years. Mary, not thinking particularly clearly and doing only what seemed natural to her addled brain, grabbed an umbrella as she was ushered out the door, not pausing to reflect that it would likely do her very little good in the present conditions. With the selective focus that people tend to acquire when they are under undue stress, Mary noticed that it was an odd umbrella, with a rather unattractive parrot head in place of a handle, which she found not only distasteful but also impractical – it made it impossible to get a good grip.

Once outside, however, Mary had to admit, rather sheepishly, that any umbrella would be impractical in the blustery torrent bombarding the school that evening. The wind tugged viciously at her arms, threatening to pull the impractical parrot head from her clammy hand. She had barely begun to feel sorry at the thought of losing someone else's umbrella through her own folly when she began to have the strangest sensation that her feet were no longer firmly anchored to the ground. This idea in itself was disturbing enough, but Mary's consternation was considerably increased when she looked down and realized that the sensation was indicative of fact – she was rising, and rising fast.

"Mary!" one of the other girls cried suddenly, recognizing Mary's plight, and pandemonium (if it had not done so already) ensued.

"Gracious Lord!"

"Mary!"

"Let go!"

And Mary, thinking this a sensible proposition, made as if to do so; but her fingers were inexplicably, terrifyingly cemented to the rod.

"Someone grab her!" commanded the same sage advisor, but by this time Mary was rising so rapidly that she was out of reach before the girl had time to finish speaking. And so the only thing left for Mary to do was cling desperately to the impractical parrot and watch with dismay as the ground fell away beneath her.


	10. Chapter 10: Unforeseen Circumstances

**10**

It didn't take long for the shock to set in. Within two minutes of leaving the ground Mary's hands were clammy and cramped from clinging to the distastefully whimsical handle of the umbrella, and although Mary could see that this insufficient grip could be life-threatening, she couldn't seem to muster any definitive emotional reactions to the fact. Feeling with a good deal of certainty that she ought to be terrified, she tried to wring a logical plan of action from her stunned mind and found that her brain had ceased to function. All she seemed capable of doing was watching with a numb remoteness as the frantic people and stalwart buildings below her slowly became blurred shadows in the downpour, growing further and further away until all she could distinguish of the earth was a vague, lumpy gray mass.

Some vague amount of time later, as the ground below her came to the brink of disappearing altogether and the first hints of unease were beginning penetrate Mary's stupor and send sharp stabs into her gut, the torrential rain suddenly began to lose integrity and break up into millions of droplets that spread together into such a dense cluster that Mary felt as though she was being tugged upward through a vast lake, closing in around her and making it difficult to breathe. Just as she began to panic in earnest the cloud suddenly gave way, and the sun burned so fiercely into her eyes that she started and gasped, and would undoubtedly have fallen all the way to her death on the earth below had her hand not been cemented to the parrot by some otherwordly force.

And then the glare faded from Mary's eyes and the sight of the clouds rolling away in sun-goldened billows beneath her feet was so magnificent that the terrifying distance of the earth below her, and the hardened knot of discontent in her chest, and every thought, and every breath suddenly became superficial, and all she could do was stare, with her whole face open wide to drink in the scene. She felt awash in the bliss that is born of identifying something as infinitely more perfect and awe-inspiring than oneself, so wonderingly joyful that she had a whimsical, silly sort of fancy that her heart would break with the beauty of it. With some subconscious part of her mind she had always suspected that when the sky turned dark and crowded and pounded the earth with unfeeling rain it was because the sun had abandoned Mary's little corner of the world, relinquishing it to the crowded misery of reality; and now, to be shown, in the most vivid, strikingly true way that she was wrong, cast a whole new shade on Mary's soul, murmuring vibrant suggestions of a hue of life yet undiscovered, one that would completely demolish every perception and thought and feeling that Mary had ever experienced, only to reform them with all the hidden beauties exposed and gleaming.

All this passed through Mary's being in one warm, swooping rush; but Mary herself felt as though she had passed whole years of her life in that one moment. It was with mild surprise that she looked down and saw that the last few wisps of cloud had only just slithered from her toes. She felt a rush of laughter at her fanciful rhapsodies pressing inside her chest, and, prompted by the insatiable joy that still pulsed inside her, obligingly gave it voice.

The somewhat hysterical nature of this laughter was what finally began to tug at the edges of her reason. Taking stock of her circumstances with a briskness that was decidedly milder than usual but no less practical, Mary decided that, seeing as her hand was evidently irreversibly coupled with the umbrella that was somehow keeping her afloat, she had no reason to fear a plummet to her death in the near future. Further (and she had a feeling that she should perhaps be more concerned about this), for some indefinable reason she felt almost certain that were she to fall, no harm would come to her. Reasoning was nonexistent, but she nevertheless felt undeniably safe.

However, that still left the issue of how to restore herself to earth before the ominous whine of hunger that she suddenly became aware was issuing from her stomach grew into anything more troublesome. This dilemma proved itself to be easily resolved, for the inkling of the predicament had no sooner presented itself in Mary's mind than the umbrella was caught by a sudden wind, swift but gentle, that propelled her over the clouds at a rate that seemed fantastically disproportional to the refreshing breeze that played lazily amongst her curls.

Gradually the storm broke up beneath her and Mary began to catch glimpses of sunshine-splashed hills and glittering gray lakes through the fragmented clouds. She had just begun to enjoy the unorthodox trip when it ended abruptly with a whoosh of wind that placed her gently on an irrationally solid cloud, and she found herself gazing through soggy, sooty air at a grimy landscape, painted in a patchwork of sullied shades of gray and sparse muted greens and giving off a low, busy hum. The light was dimming as the sun sank lazily down into the golden warmth of the horizon and Mary beheld London once more.


	11. Chapter 11: Dilemas Overcome

**11**

As happens all too frequently with most life changing moments, the glow of Mary's experience in the clouds quickly faded as she stared down at the roiling city below her. Somewhere down there her father was walking grimly back from his club, her mother was haughtily admonishing the cook to have supper ready for his return, and Henry Turngate and his mother were off romancing some other unfortunate young lady. Mary was right back where she had started, thrust back into the senseless, banal existence that was society.

But somewhere – and this "but" brought the beginnings of a smile back to Mary's mouth and lightened the heavy dullness in her eyes – Bert was there, selling flowers to the aristocrats out on their evening strolls, tipping his hat to every passerby, young or old, human or otherwise, boasting jovially that his flowers were the freshest this side of the Thames: an indispensable addition to your sweetheart's drawing room. No, London was not wholly unfriendly, so long as Bert was there.

Once she had set her mind on it (as was often the case, Mary was beginning to realize), the umbrella, or the wind, or maybe both, very obligingly carried her down from the cloud where she had originally been deposited and placed her gently down on a rock in the precise center of the pond in Hyde Park.

"Well," Mary said briskly to the umbrella, not unduly ruffled, "we'll have to do something about this, then, shan't we? Come now, you know this does me absolutely no good. On dry land, if you please."

The umbrella complied. Mary, more out of a misplaced sense of manners than anything, thanked it curtly, privately feeling rather foolish.

Once her feet were back on solid ground, she found she had a much easier time of organizing her thoughts. Of course, this left far less room for the emotional and, quite honestly, human side of Mary. Consequently Burt was set aside for the time being – she had no way of knowing where in London he was, in any case, or if he was in London at all... no, exasperatingly agonizing thought, promptly dismissed. Mary straightened her blouse with an air of finality, as if that action somehow signified triumph over her irrational anxiety. Whether or not it did, it at least distracted her – she realized self-consciously that she wasn't wearing any form of overcoat.

_How dreadfully improper_, Mary thought with a blush, and then blushed some more at how much she sounded like her mother. Well, there was nothing wrong with being presentable, after all. Mary was not unaware of the fact that she was rather good looking, all things considered, and it was only natural that she should want to present herself to her best advantage. But seeing as she had no overcoat at the moment, she would simply have to make do with what she was wearing. It was a little scandalous – the blouse was wearing thin and the skirt was too short – but she could hardly have been expected to anticipate ending up in London when she threw on these old clothes to help guard Miss Harwick's against that terrifying storm.

In any case, there was no use in standing stupidly by the lake any longer. Mary smoothed her skirt, tucked the umbrella under one arm, and stepped purposely down the path with a defiantly straight back and her most severely prim gaze.


	12. Chapter 12: An Unpleasant Revelation

**12**

At first she resolved to walk all the way to St. Paul's, where she felt she would be most likely to see Bert, or, failing that, her father on his way home from his club. However, it didn't take long for her to realize that this idea was more than ordinarily imprudent. The daylight was fading fast, and although the streetlamps dripped greasy circles of yellow light on the streets every dozen or so metres, she didn't particularly relish the thought of ending up wandering around London, alone, in the hours ripe with prostitutes and cutthroats (as she imagined, not entirely wrongly, that they were). To her annoyance the umbrella stayed stubbornly closed, despite her increasingly obvious suggestions that it provide her transport, and so she eventually resorted to using her chimneysweep-instructed skills to hitch a ride on the back of a taxi. The horse, tired and irritable from a day of particularly heavy clientelle, nodded its head in irritation at the extra weight but, to Mary's relief, did not protest violently enough to alert the driver to her presence.

Mary was decidedly out of practice, and it was with torn skirts and a good deal of relief that she finally bid farewell to the last bedraggled horse and obtuse driver as it clattered away from St Paul's square. The cathedral rose before her in the twilight, stern and majestic and inexplicably welcoming. Birds swirled through the dusky air around the dome, settling into their nests for the night. The homeward rush had dwindled, leaving only a couple dozen men to make their weary ways home. Mary looked around with an almost painfully energetic heart, half longing to see Bert strolling towards her through the dim square and half, for some reason, desperately hoping that he would not.

And then, she saw him – the other him; somewhat grayer and smaller than when she had seen him last, perhaps, but it was him nonetheless, walking briskly away from the cathedral with an acquaintance of some sort. There were the carefully creased pants, the gleaming top hat, the vigorously polished chestnut walking stick. His chin was lifted slightly, and Mary remembered vaguely an essay he had pored over some years back about the importance of maintaining a gentleman's carriage. A ghost of her mother's voice murmured "Oh, Henry, what a splendid evening! How you commanded the room!" and her father's, "nothing so simple, my dear Agatha; if one maintains the proper carriage, one will never be considered anything less than the most illustrious gentleman…"

Before she had time to ponder whether or not she wished to be seen he was mere feet away, and she shrank into herself, wishing she was not quite so far away from the building behind her. She half-hoped that he would see her, and pull her into his arms as he sometimes had years ago when she had done or said something particularly charming, and exclaim over the agony of worry that he and Mary's mother had gone through when they heard what had happened at the school; for they must have heard – Miss Harwick would surely have telephoned her parents as soon as the unfortunate incident had occurred. But no – perhaps it was better if he didn't look up – if his eyes stayed fixed on his companion. But how could he not see his own daughter? It would be agonizing – she would be forced to decide whether or not to forget her pride and try to capture his attention – but – but –

But then something happened that was far worse than if he had passed by without a glance. He saw her – their eyes met – and Mary caught her breath, waiting for the anger, or the relief, or the confusion that would entail. And then he simply looked away, with the offended, embarrassed look of someone who has seen something that has disrupted his peaceful existence and doesn't know how to respond to it. He leaned towards his companion, and Mary just barely managed to decipher his murmured words.

"Outrageous! Here, directly in front of the cathedral! Can't she market her wares elsewhere? I tell you, Montperier, this city is becoming overrun…"

The words rolled strangely around in her head for a stunned moment before they slid into understanding with a heavy jolt that sent a fiery blush racing up her neck and made her clutch self-consciously at the collar of her blouse. _Marketing her wares?_ The shame and pain boiled up against the inside of her chest and propelled her backwards into a greasy little alcove in the shop front, where she wrapped her arms around her chest and wished, with what felt devastatingly like sincerity and with a drowning, suffocating, unbearable aching, that she had never been born.


	13. Chapter 13: Birds

**13**

"There now, dear, what's this?"

The kindly, gently wavering voice nudged its way into the melee of Mary's thoughts. Mary turned, running a hand over her eyes and trying vainly to suppress the flood of tears still pushing to burst free.

The woman was old, very old indeed, with soft, draping skin and a mist of pure white hair peeping out from underneath her wide brimmed black hat. A worn but tidily knit scarf was knotted closely around her drooping neck and tucked neatly into her sturdy looking, if drab, overcoat. But those distinguishing factors were noted only superficially by Mary, as she blinked self-consciously into the old, wrinkled face tipped up to meet her gaze. What caught her attention were the woman's eyes, glinting out from underneath her sagging eyelids. They were the clear, cold blue of a January sky, and for a moment Mary caught the flash of keen intelligence in them; but then she was left gazing into a mass of wrinkles as the woman's eyelids crinkled together to make room for her kindly smile.

Mary managed a vaguely dignified "I'm quite all right, thank you," before finding it necessary to clamp her lips shut to avoid dissolving into a sobbing mass on the cobblestones. Oh, it was dreadful business, being so horridly emotional! Mary felt unmercifully disgusted with herself. She had always been able to maintain such perfect composure, even in the worst of circumstances – she hadn't even cried when her parents sent her away to school – and now this had to happen and ruin it all! She had really thought that she had complete control over her emotions, but all this time she had just been lying to herself. Mary laughed wetly, a choking, bitter laugh that made the old woman lean in closer, with a concerned tilt to her eyebrows.

"There, there, my dear, it will all turn out. It always does, I've found. Come, my dear, come sit." The woman pulled gently but firmly at Mary's elbow, and Mary, after a moment of prideful resistance, surrendered herself to be led to a nearby doorstep.

"Won't the inhabitants mind?" Mary asked, more out of a desire to present the illusion of composure than because she was really concerned about trespassing on someone's property.

"Oh, no, my dear, I don't think so. They've closed up shop for the night, I would think."

Mary sniffed daintily several times before giving in and blowing violently into her handkerchief. The woman beside her gazed at her with calm steadiness as she wiped her eyes and straightened her blouse, trying desperately to pull herself together. Once she had tucked the handkerchief away in her skirt, the woman sat back slightly and smiled her crinkled smile.

"There, my dear, that's better, is it not?"

Mary glanced vaguely over at her and nodded equally vaguely, afraid that if she let herself become too earnest her tears would betray the anguish that still bore down defiantly on her chest.

"Are you lost, dear?"

The kindly question almost loosed the floods, but Mary crushed down the surge of emotion with a firm swallow and answered as steadily as she could.

"No – not really, I mean."

An anticipatory silence ensued. Mary could almost feel the old woman's startling blue eyes watching her expectantly, waiting for elaboration. Well, she wouldn't get it. Mary had no intention of completely baring her soul to this complete stranger – for she was a complete stranger. She was.

But the segment of Mary's mind that felt an inexplicable kinship with this woman won out. Before she could stop herself the words forced their way out of her mouth, landing hollowly in the now-fog-enshrouded streets.

"No one remembers me. No one cares for me."

The words, rather melodramatic as they were, nonetheless rang true in Mary's heart as perhaps the most revealing words she had ever spoken, and once again the waters surged up inside of her. But now the anger was gone, the violent floods had subsided; and instead the tears emerged in calm, steady, bitter streams.

The woman sat quietly for several long minutes as the tears soaked into Mary's threadbare blouse. Around them, the life of the city was muffled behind the doors of homes, pubs and harems. It was still too light for London's nightly inhabitants to emerge, and the streets were nearly deserted but for the odd shrouded figure walking hurriedly home from a late workday. The woman never minded being out at twilight. It was a time between times, full of mysteries and possibilities. She smiled, with the ghost of a long-abandoned ruefulness on her lips. She was this girl, once.

"Well then, my dear," she said finally, with tender, smiling eyes that shed their light on Mary's rigidly upright form, "we are birds of a feather, you and I. I have my birds –" she gestured at the now empty sky "- and that is all."

Only then did Mary notice the frayed basket of bread at the woman's feet and the feathers dusting her clothes, and recognize the person she had seen every Sunday as a child when she and her family rumbled through the square in their carriage on the way to Grandmother's. Mary barely remembered Grandmother – she had only ever been a shriveled head with a wrinkled nightcap to Mary's childish eyes, and had died before Mary was old enough to understand that even shriveled heads with wrinkled nightcaps were human. But Mary never forgot the little old bird woman, and looked for her every week as they clattered past the cathedral. There she sat, always, her hands full of crumbs and her eyes full of love for the birds that covered her; and every now and then, if the square was quiet enough, Mary could catch her voice, a gentle murmur under the tumult of the crowd, tenderly pleading, "feed the birds, tuppence a bag…"

It wasn't much, the little demonstration of kindness that this solitary woman made, sitting with Mary as the fog rolled over the streets and the last rays of sun crawled sleepily behind the dim horizon, but it was enough.


	14. Chapter 14: The Adventure Recommences

**14**

Despite her efforts to avoid it, Mary couldn't deny that she was, in fact, wandering the streets of London at night, and that there were, in fact, a notable number of unsavory types lingering around the edges of the foggy yellow lamplight as it shone greasily around the square. It being two full years since Mary had last cavorted about the streets of London with Bert, she was not as confident as she had once been as to the general well-meaning of most of London's inhabitants, despite their uncouth appearances and course manners. Besides which, she and Bert tended to confine themselves to the rooftops at night, avoiding certain streets and areas where unpleasant scenes might take place.

Feeling increasingly conscious about her attire and her tendency to attract stares, Mary almost wished that she hadn't been so proud in her firm insistence that she would be all right, that she had no need of a place to stay, that the bird woman had best hurry home before it got any later. However, she refused to fully acknowledge that her pride was a fault – it had served her well thus far, after all (so she reasoned) – and determined that all she could do was make the best of the situation. After all, what was the worst that could happen? No, that was an impractical question, Mary reflected hastily, as headlines of mysterious disappearances and ravaged young girls presented themselves to her mind's eye. A more pertinent one would be, what was in her favor? If nothing else – and she shuddered violently at the thought – she could pass herself off as the type of woman her father had taken her for, and spend the night in a harem. Just on the floor somewhere, maybe. Perfectly innocently. Not doing _THAT,_ of course. Although what would stop a wayward young man from mistaking her for a regular inhabitant? She shuddered even more violently and forced herself to think clearly. Of course she couldn't stay in a harem. But a church, perhaps, or a convent. She had options. She had options…

Mary drew her shoulders back and strode towards the cathedral. Might as well start there. Her boots clicked loudly against the pavement. Fog-obscured faces turned. Although Mary refused to acknowledge that she was cowed by their stares, her step faltered almost of its own accord and her stride became significantly less confident. Best not to draw attention to oneself, she reflected sagely, and subdued her gait.

The big cathedral doors were locked, and no one answered her knocks. By this point Mary had become the main attraction of the square, and she hurried down the steps with as dignified an air as she could manage, reasoning that she had best make herself inconspicuous in the shadows around the sides of the majestic building. Had Mary been better acquainted with cathedrals, she might have thought to look for a smaller door through which the clergy might enter, and from which any inhabitants might be more likely to hear a knock; but Mary's father was steadfastly committed to the Church of England, and therefore she was not adequately aware of cathedrals to suppose that there was any way in but the main door.

Fortunately, no insalubrious types had decided to encamp in the shade of the cathedral that night, so Mary's way was unhindered as she hastened away from the square, making for the brightest, widest street she saw. She had been walking down this brightest of streets for some ten minutes when a brackish scent wove its way around her nose and warned her that she would soon be upon the Thames. All things considered, the Thames was not somewhere that she particularly wished to be so late at night – it summoned images of water-bloated bodies and surly sailors – and so Mary turned to make her way back towards the square, in the hopes of starting off again in a more promising direction. It was then that she realized she was being followed.

She couldn't make out the gender of her pursuer – fog obscured her view – but at that particular moment she was too suspicious of all of London's inhabitants to care much either way. She turned back towards the Thames without pausing to examine the shadowy form and branched off quickly down a side street. It was, blessedly, empty, and she slipped into the nearest doorway, waiting to see if the person would pass. Perhaps she was mistaken – perhaps this mysterious shadow really had no interest in her at all. It was possible that the two of them simply happened to be going the same way, after all.

However, Mary's intuition was well and truly alert by this point, and no amount of rational could subdue it. She really was a mess – oh, damn that man, that man with his "gentlemen's carriage" and his offended glance! Damn – damn… no, no time for that now. He was over – they were both over, they were all over. She had no reason to think of them ever again. She had no family. Only herself. Mary. Mary Poppins.

It was an odd time to make such a resolution, but then, as most anyone who has made and kept a resolution can tell you, steadfast resolutions are often made at unusual times.


	15. Chapter 15: Lost & Found

**15**

The person's footsteps were audible now. Mary's resolve to trust in no one but herself had given her some courage, and she steeled herself, waiting for her pursuer to turn the corner, reach into that dreadfully light doorway and seize her. She would not go out begging, of that she was determined.

Yes – the footsteps turned. They came closer, painfully audible in the fog-muffled night. She tensed. She could run – it would give her some advantage at least. She gently leaned the umbrella that she still held in her sweaty palm against the bricks beside her, preparing for flight. But she shouldn't run yet - it would be dreadful if she gave herself away for no reason. Mary stood, her muscles so tightly knit together that the slightest movement in her periphery would send her streaking off down the street like an alley cat. The footsteps paused. Mary stared blankly at the brick of the doorstep. She was facing away from the well-lit street – she wouldn't see her assailant until he (she? No, Mary had subconsciously decided that her pursuer was a man) grabbed her. The silence was excruciating. When would he move? Unless – perhaps he was already moving, silently, coming in for the kill –

Mary's instinct took command. She sprung from the doorway, her feet smarting in her thin-soled boots as they hit the cobblestones, her heart careening wildly around in her chest as she ran. She didn't care where she went – anywhere would do – anywhere where this man wouldn't find her. Oh, dear Lord, he was giving chase. Her breath came out in panicked gasps as she wove through the streets. It was no good – he belonged here, he knew these streets, he would find her –

It felt like hours, when in fact it was probably all of fifteen minutes. Mary was nearly sobbing as her aching legs faltered for the hundredth time. She cursed herself savagely for being so pitifully weak. She hated her parents, she hated Miss Harwick, she hated all of them, trying so terribly hard to protect their daughters, but miserably failing to teach them how to protect themselves. Her foot slipped on a cobblestone and she cried out as her ankle twisted savagely inside her boot. She pitched around the nearest corner and found herself thrown up against something warm and smelly and horribly alive.

"Here, now –"

Oh, God, oh, God, it was a man, oh, oh, oh –

"All right, then, I'm not gonna hurt ya, all right, all right, Miss, just calm down –"

Mary thrashed frantically, but he was frightfully strong, oh, how terribly strong, and it was so, so dark – but there – he wasn't holding all that tightly – Mary gasped and managed to wrench herself back around the corner into the marginally better lit street that she had just been in. He still had her wrist, and she pulled frantically at it, almost wishing she had a knife so she could just hack the whole thing off and be done with it.

The man was getting mildly peevish now.

"Now, Miss, just tell me what's wrong, and I'll try to help ya. I can't let you run off in this state, you'd likely…"

He stepped around the corner after her to get a better purchase on her arm and let the words trail off. He was even more terrifying now that Mary could see him – he was covered head to toe in grime and stood at least a foot taller than she. She bit her lip hard to keep from screaming like a fool and tugged so violently at her arm that she fancied it might part company with her hand without any help from a knife.

"Well, I'll be! Mary Poppins!"

For God's sake, how did he know her name? Just a little harder, he couldn't hold on forever –

"Mary! Mary!" He grabbed her by her shoulders and gave her a shake. "Now calm down, Mary, would your old friend hurt ya?"

There was something in that voice –

Mary stopped trying to wrench her shoulders from his grasp and stared. Was this he, then? This tall, deep voiced man? Of course he had grown – silly of her to expect him to be the same. Even so, her heart continued to race and she pulled against his hands, distrustful.

"Aw, come on, Mary – all right, hold on then, I'll show ya."

He dropped his hands, and Mary's paranoid instinct suggested that she bolt – but no, she couldn't possibly, not now. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a square of fabric that was only marginally cleaner than he was. At first it seemed that he was only rearranging the layers of soot caked on his face, but then a nose emerged, and mouth – and there were his eyes. She could never forget Bert's eyes, even if his jaw had gotten more angular and his nose less prominent. His whole face seemed to have lengthened, or maybe his features had just become more defined. In any case, the effect was unsettling, like coming back to a place that you visited and loved as a child only to realize that it isn't really the way you recalled it at all.

Bert shuffled awkwardly under her gaze.

"Well, I don't suppose I'm quite what you remembered, but it has been three years, you know, and truth be told I had a bit of a deal to recognize you myself. You're much too pretty, even prettier than the day you left – but then I always said you was a looker."

The rib was tentative, and it came accompanied by an uncertain smile, but it was undeniably Bert, there was no doubt to be had about it. And at that moment he was so beautifully, unexpectedly _there_ that before Mary could stop herself she had thrown her arms around his neck and burst into tears on his sooty shoulder.


	16. Chapter 16: Things Unspoken

**16**

It didn't take long for the tears to subside, and Mary felt rather foolish as she stood trying to wipe her nose with her lacey handkerchief, only really succeeding in spreading around the soot that she had picked up from Bert's jacket. She felt horribly self-conscious, not only of her uncharacteristically quick tears. She knew Bert was probably wondering where she had been for the past two years, but she couldn't quite bring herself to admit that she had wasted so much of her life at her parents' whim, her parents who seemed to have forgotten her existence. All she wanted was to bury the whole episode in the deepest recesses of her mind. She certainly didn't feel like thinking about it now, now that she had found Bert again. It was silly, and complicated, and rather irrational, but the truth remained that Mary could not bring herself to utter a word of explanation.

Bert's mind was engaged with the same subject as he watched her efforts absently, leaning against the greasy brick of the building behind him with his hands in his pockets. He wanted nothing more than to know why, and where, she had gone. And although he gave her the full benefit of the doubt - this was Mary, after all - an annoying, persistant part of him couldn't help wondering if her departure had really come upon her so suddenly that she couldn't even manage to say goodbye before completely disappearing from his life, without any hint of where she was going or how long she might be gone. But Bert knew that questions like these could only be answered when Mary wanted, and in the method that she chose. Questioning her, hinting that he doubted her, would only make things worse. Best to focus on the issue at hand, and let her bring up her two year absence when and how she saw fit.

"Now," he started casually, as she tucked the handkerchief back into her skirt and straightened with a sigh. "If you don't mind me asking, what exactly was you doing careening about the streets o' London on a night like this?"

Mary tensed, remembering in a rush what she had forgotten when she ran into Bert. She turned, half expecting to see her pursuer regarding them sinisterly from the next corner. But it was empty, the only creature a mangy cat scampering away through the thickening fog. She turned back, made the mistake of meeting Bert's all-too-keen eyes (veiled as they were behind his expression of nonchalance) and looked quickly away.

"I – well – in a sense, I was running."

"You was running." Bert nodded thoughtfully, and then added, as if the question had only just occurred, "And from what might you be running?"

Mary lifted her chin imperiously at his tone, and also partly to hide the sheepishness that was tugging at the inside of her chest.

"I was being followed."

But rather than teasing her for her distinct lack of follower, as Mary had rather expected, Bert raised his eyebrows and stood away from the wall, his permanent smirk of a smile fading. "Followed? You ain't hurt, are you?"

"Don't be ridiculous. How on earth could I have run all this way with an injury?" Mary's freshly sprained ankle rose pushily to her mind, but she ignored it irritably.

"Well, you can't blame a man for asking," Bert said with a shrug, crossing his arms and leaning back against the building. "And what did this pursuer look like?"

"I don't see how it matters," Mary answered briskly. "He's gone now, isn't he?" Dear Lord, she hoped he was.

"Well," Bert said thoughtfully, "it might make a bit o' difference if he turned out to be a bobby, for one thing."

Mary couldn't prevent the flush that crept up her neck, although she refused to let her embarrassment show through any other movement. Of course. A policeman. How stupid of her not to think of that. But she couldn't let Bert know that the possibility hadn't crossed her mind. Her face remained stony as she answered.

"Well, naturally I wouldn't wish to be apprehended by a policeman dressed like this, now would I?"

Bert opened his mouth and shut it quickly, glancing over her attire with a barely perceivable blush, which he tried to hide by looking away and scratching his ear.

Mary pursed her lips. "Quite."

There was a pause, during which Mary looked airily up the street to her right while Bert continued to rub his ear with his head turned in the opposite direction. He was rather wondering what, exactly, she had been doing traipsing around London at night, dressed like… well, like _that_, but couldn't quite summon the courage to ask. Ah well. The answer was probably fantastically interesting, as was always the case with Mary, but harmless. Something else to add to his list of Mary-related mysteries that would probably never be solved. He dismissed the issue and stood up abruptly.

"Well, no use standing around in the street, is there? I'll take you home."

He held out his arm, but she didn't take it. He turned to face her, wondering if he had not in fact better ask why she might not want to go home, and if it had anything to do with her wardrobe. But before his lips could form the question, she answered it.

"I can't go home. I haven't got one, you see."

She said it in that dreadfully businesslike tone of hers, still looking airily up the street in that way which Bert knew meant she was trying to hide something, most likely a strong emotion of come sort. She had gotten better at it since she went away, but she still couldn't fool him. Silly of her to try, really, but Bert supposed that that stubborn denial of human feeling was a part of her - without it, she simply wouldn't be Mary Poppins. Truth be told, he had been a bit alarmed at her earlier outburst. Still, he couldn't play along with her charade. He knew what is was to lose one's family.

"Haven't got one? Here, now…" Bert said gently. She warded off his concern with an irritated look.

"Bert, don't patronize me with that comforting tone. I haven't got one; I thought I might when I first got to London, but I haven't now, and there's nothing more to be said about it."

Bert studied her for a long moment, but she refused to surrender her front, and so he sighed shortly, smiled in a way that comforted her inexplicably (though one would never guess it by her face), and stuck out his arm again.

"Well, then, to my humble abode we go."


	17. Chapter 17: An Irritating Awareness

**17**

The arrangement was temporary – it had to be. Mary felt oddly uncomfortable living in the same building as this disquietingly grown-up Bert, even if that building was in a progressive state of disrepair and shared by ten other youths of various ages and abilities. He was, of course, terribly nice about it, and insisted that she take his bed for as many nights as she had need of it, but for some reason she was never quite comfortable there, and made up her mind within her first hour under the warm, if faded, quilt to find other lodgings as soon as possible. She racked her memory, staring up at the damp ceiling in the musty, flickering light of a streetlamp filtering through the paper-covered windows, trying to remember any relatives that her parents might have mentioned at one time or another. Preferably someone that they didn't like very much, because if they didn't like someone then Mary probably would.

It hit her some time after eleven (by the strangled chime of a next-door neighbor's creaky clock): Uncle Albert. He had only been mentioned once or twice by name that she could remember, but Mary could clearly recall catching glimpses of his name, _Albert Wigg_, in the family Bible every so often and wondering why it might be written so small, way down at the bottom in such a cramped script. He was probably disfigured, or maybe not quite right in the head, Mary thought, and though he may not be in a position to take care of himself, much less Mary, he was certainly worth a try. She resolved to look into the matter the very next morning.

Mary woke early, even earlier than Bert, and rearranged her clothes and hair, wrinkled and mussed as they were from being slept in, at a leisurely pace. After an embarrassing amount of hemming and hawing and peering calculatingly at Bert's unconscious face, and a rather loud scuffle with a pair of boots, Bert awoke rather suddenly, sniffed once, yawned widely, and climbed obligingly out of bed. Upon perceiving Mary standing expectantly by the door and looking surprisingly immaculate for one who had spent the better part of the last 24 hours amidst the grime of the London streets, his first thought was that he had best not expect a decent breakfast. His second was to wonder what Mary might have taken it into her head to do in such a state, so early in the morning. He allowed himself to express the latter thought verbally, keeping his voice low to avoid waking the other inhabitants of the room.

"I must go see an uncle," Mary responded pertly, or as pertly as she was able at a whisper.

"An uncle? What uncle? And why?"

Mary sighed impatiently. "My Uncle Albert, if you must know, and I am going to see him about lodgings." She was rather annoyed with herself for finding Bert's bleary eyes and sleep-tousled hair oddly attractive - heaven knew why she should find dishevelment (in Bert, no less) so charming - and was thus inclined to be short with him.

"Uncle Albert?" Bert repeated dumbly. Mary pressed her lips together in irritation and he quickly elaborated. "I mean to say, I don't recall you ever mentioned him before."

"Is it so surprising that there might be aspects of my circumstances with which you may not have the privilege of being acquainted?" She abandoned the question as rhetorical and stepped towards the door, pulling on her gloves. "In any case I haven't time to explain. I mean to leave early to retrieve my umbrella - I dropped it last night and I may have need of it later, judging by the state of the sky." She reached for the doorknob.

"Now, hold up there!" Bert demanded, more loudly than he intended, and glanced guiltily at the stirring forms around him. Mary looked towards the ceiling and crossed her arms impatiently.

"I mean - well, that is -" Bert said more quietly, but no less determinedly, gathering his self-righteousness, "all I mean is, it don't seem right for you go off on your own."

"Bert, I am perfectly capable -"

"Of course you are, I just -" Bert broke in, and then got self conscious as he tried to formulate his next sentence. "I simply thought, y'know, you might... care for some company."

Mary, although privately pleased that he had done what she had rather hoped he would, was too proud and too annoyed with herself to betray the agreeableness of his proposal, and responded by saying curtly, "very well, if you wish," and tapping her foot while he pulled on his coat and smoothed his hair quickly. Bert, easily recognizing the complexity of Mary's situation, if not its precise cause or nature, was not unduly put out.


	18. Chapter 18: Albert Wigg, Bookseller

**18**

The search for Uncle Albert was remarkably painless, so much so that Mary strongly suspected her umbrella, retrieved from the doorway where she had dropped it the night before in the midst of her frantic flight, of having a part in it. She had had some inkling of where Uncle Albert lived, because she remembered walking in the park as a child and being pulled away from one particular street quite often by Miss Delayney with a muttered admonishment not to mix with "unsavory relatives". Consequently, as soon as she had her umbrella safely in hand, Mary set off for the park with a vague idea of wandering along the periphery, waiting to recognize the afore-mentioned street. She had thought it a long shot, but in actuality her feet (or some other force) led her almost directly to the oily, claustrophobic lane. She recognized it instantly and promptly doubted herself, but nevertheless led Bert down the street with every appearance of being absolutely certain of where she was going. Not that Bert seemed inclined to notice or care - he was whistling cheerily and hopping on and off the curb at intervals as he half-skipped along beside her, greeting passersby and occasionally voicing whatever happened to be in his head at the moment. Mary probably would have chided him for making a spectacle of himself if he wasn't being so wonderfully and dreadfully Bert-like. It comforted her to see that he wasn't so very grown up after all.

To Mary's surprise (and gratification) the third building they came to bore a tarnished plaque on the door that read "Albert Wigg, Bookseller." The door was set back in the wall, next to a big bay window (presumably belonging to the next building over) full of musty-looking artifacts. Mary rang, with a pronounced severity to mask her nerves. A long moment passed, during which Mary allowed herself to meet Bert's uncertain glance, before the creak of floorboards could be heard inside the house and a lisping, cracking voice trumpeted, "don't go away, don't go away, I'm coming!"

The door flew open to reveal a largish middle-aged man with a high hairline, small round glasses perched on a somewhat bulbous nose, and an ill-fitted olive colored coat and knickerbockers. He peered at them pleasantly with baggy, humorous eyes.

"Yes? Can I help you?"

"Albert Wigg?" Mary asked briskly.

"Yes, that's me," the man answered, his eyebrows raised in a question (the question being "who is this ragged and unreasonably prim young lady, and what is she doing on my doorstep so early in the day?").

"Uncle Albert, I don't believe we've met, but I am your niece, Mary. Mary Poppins." She presented her hand austerely.

Uncle Albert stared at her for a moment as the name he knew so well attached itself to this stern and lovely face, and then broke into a smile.

"Well, I'll be! Mary Poppins! Come in, my dear, come in!"

Mary, somewhat surprised at the ease with which she was being welcomed into her alienated uncle's home, glanced quickly at Bert before walking across the threshold, after which her uncle took her hand and shook it heartily. He didn't seem addled, Mary thought, just a little odd and not very well off; but then, she supposed, with a dull, bitter pang, that would be enough to disgrace one in the eyes of the Poppinses.

"And might this be my nephew James?" Uncle Albert named Mary's next-youngest sibling, holding out a hand to Bert.

"Erm-" Bert said, looking uncomfortable.

"No," Mary said quickly. "I beg your pardon – this is a friend of mine. Bert."

"Ah, well, two in a day would be a bit much to ask for, eh?" Uncle Albert chuckled good-naturedly. "Splendid to meet you, my dear boy! Come in, come in! No use in us all standing here in the doorway. Make yourselves at home, my dears, there's a fresh pot of tea and some breakfast in the drawing room. I was just about to partake myself, but I never turn down a guest if one presents itself. Or two, for that matter!"

Mary found Uncle Albert to be good natured and wonderfully welcoming. He was civil without being stuffy, and seemed genuinely interested in her replies to his commonplace questions, although she couldn't answer many of them for fear of giving something of her situation away too soon. By the time the crumpets had been reduced to crumbs and the tea was a soggy mass of leaves in the bottom of the pot, Mary felt quite at home with him. The time had come to get down to business. Despite the violent struggle that it took to overcome her loathing of any mention of the subject, it was with an appearance of utmost nonchalance that Mary let slip her alienation from her family, and from there it was all too simple, really.

"Oh dear me, now what _shall_ we do with you?" Uncle Albert cried. "I can't imagine putting you back out in the streets -"

Mary straightened imperiously, her eyes wide at his non-existent effrontery.

"_Mr_. Wigg! Are you suggesting I stay _here?_"

"Well, my dear, I didn't say –"

"Unchaperoned? Really, Albert Wigg, I am insulted. You may be my uncle, but I've only just met you! I'd sooner sleep in the gutters than lower myself to ridicule."

"In the gutters? Oh, my dear Mary, I couldn't possibly allow-"

"Couldn't you?"

Uncle Albert cast vainly about for some way to respond to such a comment, and, finding none, shrugged feebly. Mary sighed gustily, relinquishing her piercing stare, and reached up to put on her hat.

"Oh, very well. If I must, I must. But the first hint of a scandal and I'll not stay here another day, is that understood?" She raised her eyebrows expectantly at Uncle Albert as she pulled on her gloves. Uncle Albert, more than a little confused at how this turn of events had come about, nodded vaguely, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

"Good. Then I shall fetch my belongings and return this evening." She stood. Bert, looking quickly from Mary to Albert and back again with mouth agape, got hurriedly to his feet as well, a bemused smile starting.

"Good day, Uncle Albert. We will show ourselves out," Mary said, and then had to add, with a shade more warmth, "It's so very nice to meet another member of the family," because it was, for more reasons than the material benefits that the association would provide her with.

Outside on the street, Bert stepped in her way, stopping her in her tracks. She anticipated his intention and looked airily away over his right shoulder.

"Why, Mary Poppins!"

"What _are_ you doing, Bert, do step out of my way," Mary said to the shop behind him, apparently exasperated.

Bert grinned and didn't move, silently daring her to look at him. Mary heaved a sigh and prepared to meet his gaze without acknowledging that she understood him, but found that once she saw the knowing laughter in his eyes she couldn't quite keep a small, partly proud, partly embarrassed smile from showing itself briefly on her lips. She _did_ have a rather unconventional and remarkably effective method of soliciting assistance, after all. Bert chuckled and stepped aside, taking her arm.

"I do believe you will never cease to surprise me," he said, and Mary proved him right by smiling up at him with entirely unguarded laughter.


	19. Chapter 19: A Worthy Acquisition

**19**

It was lovely, having a room again, and not only a room but an empty one, plainly papered in drab yellow and containing no furniture save an unremarkable iron-framed bed. In short, it was a room just waiting to be improved upon. Mary had always taken pride in her personal appearance, and found herself rapidly falling prey to a sense of pride for her surroundings as well. One of the first additions to the room was a tall, jeweled lamp, closely followed by a lovely gold-framed mirror and a chest of drawers. Most of these artifacts were purchased with money from Uncle Albert ("gifts," said he; "loans," said she) at a small, seedy establishment of questionable merit a few blocks from Uncle Albert's shop, and it was in this same place, several months after her return to London, that Mary found the carpetbag.

Her eye landed on it almost at once, though it was tucked into the furthest corner of the shop at the very top of one of the rickety shelves that lined the walls, and she knew, with absolute certainty, that it was waiting for her. She had to ask the shop owner, a stringy man with deceptively clean clothes and a filthy beard, for assistance in removing it from its perch, which he did hobblingly while remarking, in a muttering, noncommittal kind of way, that he didn't recall acquiring it. However, upon noting the keenness with which Mary eyed it and knowing her history of purchases, he named an exorbitant price. After some time of confusing discussion, she gamely paid a fraction of what he demanded and left him to puzzle over why he might feel such a sense of accomplishment when all he held in his hand was sixpence.

After the unusual way in which the carpetbag presented itself in her life, Mary was not unduly surprised when she realized that it could hold a remarkable amount of her belongings. It stayed its normal size so long as the only items it contained could fit comfortably in that space, but as more and more of Mary's new books (gifts from Uncle Albert's own shop) and other necessities found their way into the bag she began to be aware that she was never short of space. Helpfully, besides providing endless storage space while maintaining a manageably sized exterior, the bag also seemed to have an admirable sense of organization, as, more often than not, whatever item Mary was looking for presented itself readily at the top of the bag as soon as she reached in.

Bert, upon being shown the phenomenon, stared open-mouthed until Mary lost patience.

"For goodness sake, Bert, _do_ shut your mouth, you are making yourself ridiculous."

Bert obeyed and, to his credit, recovered sufficiently and quickly enough to escort Mary outside for a stroll before the sun completed its lap of the sky.

It was a lovely evening, all gilt leaves and murmuring breezes and golden rays warm and soft and almost thick enough to drink. The morning's leaden sky had melted into a gossamer silver-blue by late afternoon, setting off the sun's watery yellow hue so that it lay rich and buttery in the fragile air. It reminded Bert of something vivid and far away, and as they stepped into the street he stopped, letting Mary's hand slip from his arm as he endeavored to know the meaning of his half-formed recollections.

"Bert?"

He looked at her and suddenly understood.

"Mary Poppins," he said with a grin, "it's high time you saw London properly again."


	20. Chapter 20: A Terrifying Concept

**20**

It was indeed high time. Mary could nearly fool herself into believing she was still 13 and young and loved again as, for the first time in almost three years, she and Bert surveyed the roofs of London laid out below them. But the illusion was broken as soon as she turned her glance to Bert, so tall, so thoughtful, with only a glint in his eye and a quirk about his mouth to reassure her that, yes, this was her Bert. The shock was not so bad as she feared, and, in fact, now that she had had time to get somewhat more accustomed to his angular chin and big hands, she could admit to herself, rather vaguely, that he was fairly attractive. From a purely objective viewpoint.

With this seemingly innocent acknowledgement behind her, Mary settled into a sense of security that was, it must be asserted, false. Now she had met the problem head on (so she thought); the reason for her unease around Bert had been identified and cooly shelved in the recesses of her mind._ What a wonderful sense of freedom!_ she told herself with what felt like sincerity. And, in a brash attempt to prove just how free she really was, she let her mind wander in a daunting direction.

Mary knew that Bert had noticed the change in her appearance when he first saw her - after all, he had told her so, in his usual cheeky way - but until that moment she had never speculated as to what he really thought of it. Now the wonder accosted her full force, and as her illusion of defense toppled she rushed to scatter her thoughts away from the question as it rapidly evolved into something significantly more mature and unsettling than she had anticipated. She had a vague suspicion that the concept that she was fleeing in such horror from was distinctly related to her discomfort (not vanquished, after all) with Bert's strong back and broad shoulders, but, being entirely terrified of the whole subject, she fiercely ordered herself to turn her thoughts elsewhere. As is often the case, though her brain mechanically obeyed, her subconscious very decidedly did not.

"Mary," Bert said thoughtfully, breaking the silence and causing Mary's lungs to contract. Surely he knew her mind. She felt as though her face screamed the truth. And now he was going to speak it. Put it into words as he stared at her in disbelief, disgusted by her common mind. How absolutely mortifying.

In reality, Bert was in an entirely different mental universe, and had in fact been musing over the condition of his chalks, the suitability of the weather and the various other concerns of a screever, quite oblivious to Mary's mental grappling. He had in fact addressed her simply to voice a notion that had presented itself to him the previous day while selling flowers in the park, and which he was quite naturally reminded of, as the park pavement was where Bert the Screever usually displayed his work.

"Mary, did you ever think... well, I was selling flowers on the green the other day, watching the people coming and going and all, and I had a thought. That is, an idea, about work - a job, see. I know you was looking for a respectable post –"

Mary, realizing with a shuddering relief that Bert was not, in fact, going to expose the bleak and upsetting reality of her perception of him, became unnecessarily sharp.

"Well?"

"Well, and I thought, since you seem to like children…"

This observation was largely without basis, as Mary had never shown any apparent inclination towards children. She appreciated them, certainly, and was fairly confident in her ability to interact with them, but she had never really considered them as something that had much relationship with herself, except in that she had been one once. "Like" children? Well, certainly, but she had never truly showed it, and in her present state of mind she didn't particularly feel like granting Bert any freedom to embellish the truth. Besides which, discussing children with Bert after her distressing revelation was not ideal and, in fact, the mere prospect of such a discussion spawned a slew of half-formed suppositions which had to be cast violently away before they could make an impression on Mary's psyche. Given her considerable inner turmoil, it is perhaps forgivable that Mary interrupted Bert's open-ended statement with such severity.

"Do I?" she demanded.

Bert stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged, looking only mildly uncomfortable.

"Well, you have a way with 'em," he amended, and pushed on before she could contradict him. "And I was thinking, what if you was to do that for pay? Take care of 'em, I mean."

"Like a nanny."

"Well, now, don't sound so superior. It's a perfectly respectable job."

"I'm certain it is," Mary said with a sigh, playing resignation at having to spell out her objections (which she blessedly had the presence of mind to produce). "But how on earth would I advertise? Unable to use my own good name, without references, without a guardian, save my uncle with whom I live alone." She paused, mentally wincing as she probed a subject so closely related to that which she had agonized over mere minutes earlier and was in fact still doing her utmost to counteract. "Besides which, I am simply not old enough."

Bert was not convinced that this list of issues was sufficient to merit the denial of his idea altogether, but perceiving Mary's tightly controlled (if inexplicable) distress, was not insensible of the benefits of keeping silent.


	21. Chapter 21: Self Imposed Realities

**21**

Mary was reading when he came to ask her for a stroll. He could see her through the window in the front door, curled up in a chair in the little sitting room at the end of the hall, her hair falling out of her bun in a very un-Mary-ish way. She wasn't well – he had suspected it for a week at least, and could sense it now more than ever as he watched her staring blankly down at the book in her lap, fidgeting with an escaped curl. It would be awfully nice if she would confide in him, he thought idly, but knowing that such a thought was laughable fancy, he dismissed it without further contemplation. He was just Bert, after all; friendly, diverting old Bert. That was the curse of being so almighty jolly all the time – no one ever suspected that there might be a deeper thread of feeling and understanding under all his laughing and larking about. Oh, but enough – he was a fool to pity himself. Mary was the one who needed attending to now. She hadn't been out for a walk with him since their foray on the rooftops, and he was determined to get her out of the house this evening. Maybe he would never be her confidante, but he could at least be a distraction from her troubles, and there was nothing better for that than a lively turn in the park.

He knocked, he queried. She resisted. He pressed. She grew irritated. He suggested ill health. She took umbrage. And thus they set off for the park.

"What a dreadful day," Bert said cheerfully, breaking a three-minute silence. He spoke true – the sky was its usual dull iron hue and the air hung heavily from the trees. By nightfall the streets would be glossy with mist.

"If you find it so very dreadful, I wonder that you insisted on this escapade," Mary answered coldly.

"Well, now, don't be so severe. I only said it was dreadful – not that I disliked it."

"What utter nonsense."

"Is it then?"

Mary narrowed her eyes and didn't answer, squeezing her umbrella more tightly under her arm. She refused to be undone by Bert's prattle. She was able to suppress her unpleasant feelings for him tolerably well, so long as she could keep herself convinced that there was nothing charming about his larking about.

The park gate was before them. Mary found herself slowing involuntarily as a row of color on the pavement along the fence caught her eye.

"Are these…?" She regretted the breach of character as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

"Indeed they are!" Bert answered proudly. "Done them all meself. Got a full tuppence for me trouble, but I s'pose I do it as much for the fun of it as anything else."

He would go and say something sweet like that, Mary thought savagely, but then she did bring it on herself by showing an interest. Still, she couldn't have just passed them by. She hadn't seen his drawings for years, and the improvement was significant. One in particular caught her eye. An elaborate merry-go-round stood in the foreground, surrounded on one side by trees and passed on the other by a road that wound around a rise in the ground, curling into the distance over a sapphire-hued river which glinted in the warm yellow sunlight.

It spoke to her of childhood dreams and breezy happiness, trust, optimism, innocence. And for a moment, more than anything else in the world, Mary wanted to be there, to run along that sandy road and ride those gleaming merry-go-round horses and roll in that soft green grass. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, imagining the crisp, clean scent of the trees and the brush of the sunshine on her shoulders.

"Hold on, there -!"

Mary opened her eyes, wondering at Bert's exclamation, and gasped.

Gone were the gray-soaked sky and the bleak empty trees, the misty streetlamps and the cold iron fence of the park. There in front of her were the merry-go-round, the road, the flourishing trees, the clear blue sky.

She looked over at Bert and found him staring at her, mouth agape.

"I suppose that was me, yes, and no, I don't know how I did it, so please don't ask," she said, trying out of habit to sound brisk, but not putting much effort into it. Wherever this… talent of hers had come from, it was proving itself to be much more powerful than she had supposed. Further, it was becoming increasingly obvious that she controlled it, rather than the other way around, which was what she had rather thought after her first encounter with the umbrella – which, incidentally, had taken the form of a rather frilly white parasol. In fact – Mary looked back over at Bert, and then down at herself – her umbrella wasn't the only part of their attire that had changed. She was no longer wearing her favorite blue coat, skirt and bodice, but instead a beautiful creamy white muslin with a blue sash and elbow-length sleeves, while Bert was looked particularly ridiculously dashing in a blue pinstriped suit.

"Is it… safe?" Bert took a tentative step forward. A faint cloud of dust rose from his foot.

"I should think so," Mary answered, looking around. She didn't feel at all uneasy, and the past few months' experience with her unusual talent had taught her that her feelings were pretty much always trustworthy.

Although the world around them felt fairly realistic, it was clearly still a drawing – the chalk lines in the grass were evidence of that. Leaning down, Mary brushed one white-gloved hand across a clump of flowers and found a smear of yellow chalk on her glove.

"Still only a drawing, but real enough."

Mary felt a sudden lightening in her chest. She had wished to go back to the carefree days before her imprisonment at school, and here she was, with Bert, dear old Bert – and how mean of her to treat him so coldly just because – well, never mind the because. She wouldn't think of that now, not here. He would be dear old Bert again, if only for a little while, and that little while would be enough. Without giving herself time to think twice she took his hand.

"Shall we?"


	22. Chapter 22: Unexpected Sentimentality

**22**

"Oh, what a lovely day!" Mary sighed, gazing out over meadow with shining eyes. They were stretched out on the rise in the ground, gazing out over the merry-go-round and its horses (which, incidentally, had a habit of leaping out of their places), the clump of trees that hid a charming little patisserie where Bert had been startled by their waiter's unorthodox species and ability to talk, and the twist in the road where it turned off in the direction of a beautiful, glimmering pond. It was just like old times, rambling around the countryside with Bert like carefree children (except this time there was a decent amount of real countryside to explore; it didn't exist largely in their imaginations and end abruptly at the park gate).

"I don't think I've had a nicer time in my life."

"Hmm," Bert agreed, and then, impulsively, "I missed you, Mary."

Mary, slightly put off by this sudden foray into sentimentality, didn't answer. Perhaps he would leave it at that.

Bert, on his part, had in fact surprised and slightly embarrassed himself with the unintentional outburst, and didn't intend to pursue the subject, not wanting to endanger Mary's carefree mood any further.

However, the intentions of both were somewhat rudely spoiled by the parrot-shaped handle of Mary's umbrella-turned-parasol.

"Oh, come now, tell him that you missed him too."

Mary stared in horrified consternation at the unattractive bird.

"I beg your pardon! Did you just – "

"Indeed I did, and I'll do it again. I said, tell him – "

"Oh, _do_ be quiet!" Mary cried, shoving the parrot under her coat, where it blessedly obeyed her. Her shock at her umbrella's sudden verbal aptitude had been lessened somewhat in her haste to smother the umbrella's words, and she glanced uneasily at Bert, hoping that he hadn't recovered quite as quickly as she had and had therefore missed what the umbrella had given away. However, despite a dazed expression, Bert had evidently grown somewhat accustomed to Mary's peculiarities and was very definitely looking at her with something akin to a question in his eyes.

"Yes, all right, I did," Mary said crossly, and before she had time to wonder why, she added, in a softened tone, "I missed you dreadfully."

He smiled, and she smiled, and then found herself looking rather too deeply into his eyes and turned away abruptly.

He was so sweet, so friendly. The worst part was that he seemed to have no idea why she had suddenly started acting so aloof. She wasn't blind – she saw the confusion in his eyes whenever she broke off a conversation or became suddenly severe. Not only did this make her feel terribly guilty, it also sat heavily in the pit of her stomach as indicative of something worse, although she instinctively shied away from what, exactly, that something might be. In truth, although Mary was far too proud and afraid to admit that this might cause her pain, that something was the idea that if Bert felt the same way for her as she did for him, surely he wouldn't be so bewildered by her aloofness. He would recognize it for what it was: the collateral damage of her inconvenient love.

In short, as Mary's subconscious surmised (somewhat faultily, many would agree), Bert's pain was proof that he couldn't possibly care for her.


	23. A Beginning Between Beginnings

She absolutely must find some method of occupying herself - that much was certain. The thought of seeing him every day, of risking either hurting him with her coldness or giving away the ugly secret that lay curled up in the darkest corner of her heart, was unbearable. Neither could she imagine leaving him completely. For one thing, it would hurt him terribly, and she refused to consider doing that to him again, after her unexplained disappearance four years earlier. She couldn't punish him for not… that is, it wasn't his fault that he didn't… well. Best not to think about that. Anyway, the least she owed him was recognition of the friendship that he had so unselfishly given her, when she was nothing more than a spoiled little girl in want of adventure. This is how she would repay him: by not throwing away the friendship that she had forced him to work so hard to earn. She would ignore this silly, irritating tremor in her normally unshakeable poise. When they met, she would smile broadly and greet him sincerely. When they were alone, she wouldn't hide behind her pride. After everything he had been to her and everything he continued to be, the least she could do was be his friend.

But what would she do with herself in the meantime? She could never manage – yes, she would admit that much, this was something that she couldn't manage – if she saw him every day, as she did now. At the same time, now more than ever she needed the security of his friendship, of knowing that he was nearby, ready to walk or talk or just sit with her, fiddling with his harmonica or making Bert-ish comments about the trees and the flowers and the passers-by. But she couldn't see him every day, not like she had been for the last few months. She didn't – she couldn't –

Yes, she would admit it: she wasn't strong enough. She needed time between seeing him to collect her thoughts and talk away these stubbornly fanciful ideas and become reacquainted with reality. She needed an excuse, something to keep her busy and away from the devastation of his company. Besides which, she would have to find a way to earn a living. She was determined not to rely on Uncle Albert for the rest of her life – as kind and generous as he had been over the last several months, Mary knew that he was far from rich. Besides, she had the suspicion sometimes that there was something not quite normal about him, even beyond the squeaky laugh and the olive knickerbockers (she could swear sometimes that she heard him laughing like a maniac alone in his room).

As Bert had anticipated, his suggestion of nanny-hood, given so many days ago, had not been forgotten. Mary found herself lying awake the night after their chalk drawing adventure, pondering the reality of being a nanny. To be perfectly honest, she had to admit that she had never truly seen governesses and nannies and nursemaids as people. Their social status didn't do much for them – they weren't quite upper class, but they occupied a different niche than servants, carriage drivers, and chimneysweeps did, and therefore had never caught Mary's attention as an undervalued part of the social hierarchy to become acquainted with and appreciated. If anything, they were an upper-middle-class subgroup. Miss Delayney, for instance - surely she belonged in the same category as Mary's parents. She was familiar enough with affluence to be poisoned by it, and dull enough to suppose that the only way to prosper was through the acquisition of it, which in her mind was made possible only by a dutiful obedience of society's laws. To become a nanny – to become like her – no, Mary was nothing like Miss Delayney, surely. For if she bore any resemblance to Miss Delayney, then by extension she resembled her parents. Her parents, who would sooner abandon their children than risk jeopardizing their place in society.

However, despite her distinct hatred for her father and her contempt for her mother, Mary couldn't ignore the fact that with some part of her cranial or cardiac anatomy she missed her brothers and sister, the grinning, pestering little creatures that had grown by her side. She hadn't thought of them much at school, while it seemed a certainty that she would see them again, but with the prospect of eternal estrangement before her she found herself wanting to see her younger siblings with something akin to yearning. Doubtless they had mostly forgotten her by now anyway, but even so, it would be nice to at least say goodbye, an act that she hadn't thought important upon leaving for school. Of course, she had rather expected that her parents would think vacations and holidays reason to send for her, and that she would see them all again in a few months. _Silly presumption_, she told herself, but didn't really believe it, being young enough to remember with unpleasant clarity the cold Christmas mornings on which she had awoken alone in the dormitory, with only a few paper-wrapped packages waiting coldly on her bedside table to serve as gifts. Her birthday was only slightly more bearable, for although she woke to the company and polite well-wishes of her roommates she never received anything more than a curt card from her parents and one of those paper-encased packages of stockings or hair ribbons or, once, a shawl. Pretty enough to prove that they cared, but never so extravagant as to give away any hint that they loved. Her mother, ever practical. Her father, ever distant.

Mary thought of her little brothers James and William, her little sister Christine. She had no doubt that they would grow up just like their parents. They had never shown signs of the individuality that Mary was born with – Mary herself being an anomaly, it would be irrational to suppose that another child in the same family would exhibit the same unusual and valuable characteristics. But that didn't make them any more deserving of their parents' displays of indifference. How was it, Mary thought angrily to herself, that those innocent, hopeful children should be forced to grow up in such impersonal, mind-numbing conditions? What gave her parents the right to barricade up their affection behind reason and greed? She hated her parents, not because she thought that they had never loved her, but because they refused to show it.

_Someone should _make_ them show it_, Mary thought, and, with a considerable amount of surprise, found the problem of her parents and the problem of Bert colliding in such a way that the pieces fell neatly into one comprehensible picture. She needed employment, did she not? And Bert himself had said that she would make an uncommonly effective nanny, had he not? Naturally she couldn't interview at her own home (though she was bitter enough to believe that her parents no longer wanted her, she was not so jaded as to suppose that living with them in close quarters wouldn't result in the discovery of her identity), but that was immaterial - her family was by no means an anomaly, not in upper-middle-class London. There were plenty of other unhappy, insufficiently loved children behind the ornate, imposing facades of the mansions near Hyde Park. Someone had to make their parents see reason, and it might as well be Mary.

And thus, an idea was born.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

The End... of my part of the story :)


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